


Little Yellow Riding Hood

by sleepypie1212



Category: Heirs - Fandom
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-27
Updated: 2016-05-27
Packaged: 2018-07-10 14:22:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 22
Words: 29,816
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6988834
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sleepypie1212/pseuds/sleepypie1212
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cha Eun Sang just wants to find a way out of poverty for herself and her mother. But a wronged werewolf prince has other plans for her...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Cha Eun Sang swirled the yellow cape around her shoulders. “It’s so pretty, mother.” She beamed.

Her mother, a weary looking woman in her mid-forties—too young to look so old—smiled with pride. She had no words, and never had, but her heart was always in her eyes, and that was enough for Cha Eun Sang. Our Eun Sang makes it look twice as beautiful.

“Ya, such foolishness. It’s all your hard work—all that care.”

The pride vanished momentarily from her mother’s eyes to be replaced by anxiety. Will it impress Lady Kim?

“Of course it will.” Eun Sang took her mother’s hands, worn from years as a seamstress, and rubbed them comfortingly. “How could she not think you the best at your craft in the entire region? She’ll hire you for certain, and then there will be steak for dinner every night.”

Park Hee Nam nodded, still uncertain. She was indeed an excellent seamstress, one of the best in her daughter’s opinion, but there was little scope for her skill in the country. Cha Eun Sang loved their home, a sturdy wooden house her father had built in the early days of his marriage, set back from the road and framed in cherry trees. In spring the world seemed made up of blossoms. But in winter, as in now, skeletal branches scraped against the walls and the odd draft barreled through chinks. And it was such a small settlement—when her father and brought her mother back from the capital where he had found her, it had been even smaller. He hadn’t thought she’d need to use her skills to support herself. But then he had died, leaving his wife and two daughters to wrack their brains to find a way to survive in what was predominantly a farming community.

The best solution would have been for Eun Seok, Eun Sang’s older sister, to marry a strapping farm boy to take over their farm lands. But Eun Seok had refused quietly, saying she’d never marry any of the crass boys who lived around them, and had instead left for the capital, swearing she’d rather work as a housemaid. Eun Sang had been too young to marry in her place, and so the lands had been sold off to stave off debt collectors.

Eun Sang told herself she didn’t resent Eun Seok. After all, she wouldn’t have chosen to marry any of the neighboring boys she knew as well. Not even Yoon Chan Young, her best friend.

So they had done the best they could on their own, she and her mother. Until the news had come a month ago that the great house out in the woods was being re-opened, the local lords returning from their stay at court after years. It was perfect. All they needed to do was show the lady of the house that she could have quality, stylish dresses at her very door, and their fortunes would be made.

So Park Hee Nam had made this dress-pink and yellow and full skirted, embroidered with flowers that looked so real you could almost smell them, with a silken yellow hood. Beautiful and sophisticated, and far beyond the usual homespun woolens that were the norm in their house.

All Eun Sang had to do was present herself in this dress at their house to pay the customary respects due to lords, complete with a basket of the finest food she could prepare, and hope her beautiful dress would be noticed and asked after. And of course, it would be. No one made more stunning clothing than Park Hee Nam. She’d had a growing reputation even in the capital before her marriage.

Eun Sang gathered her breath, and her basket. “It will all go well, mother. Don’t worry.”

Her mother nodded, grave. She gave her daughter’s hand one last squeeze. Go carefully. She cautioned.

Eun Sang laughed, stepping out of the door and pulling her hood up. “What’s there to be afraid of?”

***

He leaned back in his chair, feeling the old hunger surge over him. “What indeed, little Eun Sang? What indeed?”

Casually he wiped his fingers across the mirror, and the image of the beautiful girl stepping into the snow faded into blackness, leaving his cave lit only by the fluttering candles. Their sweet beeswax scent mingled with the faded flowers strewn across the floor, and he stood, crushing yet more with his long, narrow feet.

The full moon would rise tonight, the first of three such nights during the Kim’s return, which made tonight a very important night indeed. And Cha Eun Sang would be abroad.

Fortunate coincidence?

Or destiny?

All things considered, Choi Young Do would have to think the latter. He stretched, feeling his muscles stretch taut, already hungry for change. Not yet, he thought, urging patience down his bones. He had some errands to run first.

He padded to the cave entrance, and leaned against the solid stone wall. It was a wintry late afternoon like many he had witnessed from this vantage point. But it would, thank the gods, be one of the last. Soon he would be free to move on.

But he firmly believed Cha Eun Sang owed him something before he left, for all the pain and grief of the past fifteen years. A powerful debt. She would help him rescue what was his.

He ran a thoughtful tongue along the edge of his mouth. She was an interesting woman, this Eun Sang. He had watched her grow up, seen the icy walls she built around her heart. Something about those walls piqued the wolf in him. She was going to be a challenge.

She would defy him every step of the way, run so cold it would take every vein of his heat to warm her, but in the end, she would lose.

He smiled, and turned. He loved challenges.

It was good to be a wolf.


	2. Chapter Two

Cha Eun Sang felt the soft crunch of snow beneath her feet as she wended her way down the path from her house to the main road.

 

But once she reached the main road—a long, narrow track that led through town—she stopped in dismay, dropping one soft skirt edge to brush the shining surface of white that demarcated the forest from the road.

Because the road was a muddy mess. Carts had obviously been this way all day, churning pristine snow into a slushy, filthy mess. Puddles she guessed she could probably drown in pocked the road as far as she could see. Eun Sang let out a swear word that would have deeply upset her mother. She couldn’t walk in that. The dress would be ruined.

“Yoon Chan Young, where are you when I need you?” She muttered, weighing her options. Either her best friend showed up at a magically convenient time with his father’s wagon, she walked that mess…or, she took a shortcut.

Eun Sang turned and eyed the forest with a slight misgiving. The late afternoon would be sliding into dusk soon, and while that wouldn’t matter on the main road, walking through the forest at night gave even the least superstitious people in the town hesitation. There were always whispers of a mysterious beast that lived in the depths, coming out at night to stain his teeth with the foolish who trespassed on his land.

But then, Eun Sang wasn’t the least superstitious person in town. She wasn’t superstitious at all. You really couldn’t afford to be when you needed to be very practical to survive. So she shook herself, gathered up her skirt, and prepared to ignore her mother’s order to ‘go carefully.’

“There are probably no bandits.” She reasoned with herself, following the pillared line of tree trunks. “Who would come here to steal? Everyone’s poor as mice.” This was a comforting line of logic, and so she followed it, letting her voice echo clearly in the crisp air. “And if they did come, what would they be doing out in the forest? They’d want to be nearer the road.”

She carefully lifted her slippered feet away from the more treacherous snow drifts, sticking to a barely visible line of better-trod frost. It was a beautiful forest, the further one went into it, all clear lines and sharp contrasts, and Eun Sang was beginning to enjoy the way the fast fading light created bruised-blue silhouettes on the ground. “And what bandit could be all bad,” she finished, smilingly slightly, “who chose his living place based on beauty, instead of practicality?”

“You’d be surprised.” A dark, amused voice came from her right, and she whirled, startled, skirt rustling around her ankles.

A young man leaned against a tree immediately behind her, every line of his body assured. One thick eyebrow quirked at her shock. “Didn’t hear me coming? Ya, careless. Bandits would find you easy prey.”

She placed one protective hand on her basket, and stepped backwards. She couldn’t place him—his face, in all its arrogance, was unfamiliar. Had she really been so much of an idiot as to talk herself into walking right into a thieves’ trap? How stupid could you get?

“Who are you?” She asked, and was pleased to hear her voice calm and controlled. Show fear, and the wolves circled. That was a basic tenet of living.

“You don’t know me?” The wolf followed her backwards movement, one lithe step to match her one startled jump.

“No. Should I?”

“Mm. Opinions differ, apparently.” He continued to move forwards, she continued to move back. “But I, I know you. Little Cha Eun Sang.”

Cha Eun Sang felt her pulse jump, a startled shock of fear. If she’d been less controlled, she might have turned and fled. But that, she felt instinctively, was the worst of her options. Instead she bit her cheek until she tasted the metallic flavor of blood, and continued. “How pleasant for you to know the name of the person with whom you are conversing. Care to extend the same courtesy to me?”

He paused in his forward movement, checked by the sarcastic challenge in her voice. “Manners. How…refreshing.” His eyebrows moved again, a quick thoughtful dart across his forehead, and then relaxed once more. Something about his posture changed—became more erect, less of a prowl, more…human.

Even his face changed. The vague threat she had read into the curve beneath his eyes and the lift of his lip was gone. Instead, there was merely a young man, neatly but unremarkably dressed in black clothing and quizzical in smile. His face was still…off…somehow, though. Too lean, as if he’d never eaten; too strongly featured to be considered handsome, but oddly magnetic. She wondered, dazedly, if people ever noticed classically handsome men around him. Somehow, she thought they must seem washed out and bland, like milk next to strong wine.

“Choi Young Do, at your service.” He swept her a long, lazy blow. Eun Sang contemplated kicking him in the nose and fleeing, but he was back up before she could execute the idea.

“Is that supposed to mean something to me?” She folded her arms across her chest, feeling the basket thunk against her skirt.

His eyes slid down to the basket, and then back up to her face. “My, you have a large basket there. I only thought you might like some help carrying it.”

“I can carry my own baskets.”

“Perfectly reasonable.” He nodded. “On a good day, I myself am capable of carrying two, or even three.”

“How fortunate for you.” This was one of the oddest conversations Eun Sang had ever engaged in, even with Chan Young, who could be spectacularly silly when was in the right mood. “Now if you’ll excuse me…”

“I couldn’t possibly.” She had turned, but he had slid himself around her somehow, without making a sound, or what even seemed like movement. She blinked. He had already extended a hand. “Your basket please?” The voice was slickly courteous.

The eyes were not.


	3. Chapter Three

Choi Young Do could see her considering her choices, her serious eyes flickering from his smile to the snowy woods beyond him.

He saw the realization dawn that there were actually no choices—just one inevitability. He saw the acceptance, and then the furious wheels turning behind that deceptively fragile façade.

He just waited, hand outstretched, polite smile in place.

After a long moment, in which the air seemed to become perceptibly colder between them, she handed the basket over.

He wrapped his long fingers around the handle. “Not so difficult, was it?” He teased lightly.

“Since you have taken my basket, I assume I am free to leave?”

“Not so fast, my lady.” He stepped to her side, and looked out into the scenery, inhaling deeply and thoroughly enjoying himself the most he had in years. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I didn’t escort you to your destination?” He presented his free arm. She looked at it as if it was diseased. He shook it at her, prompting. She tilted her chin stubbornly away.

“We’ll work on that.” He let his arm fall to his side. A challenge indeed.

“Gentlemen,” she said with icy dignity, “don’t steal baskets.”

“Entirely wrong.” He began moving forwards. “In reality, only a gentleman can pull it off with the required style.”

He kept walking, but there were no tell-tale footsteps behind him. He glanced backwards. “Coming?”

Her hands tightly balled against the yellow fabric of her cloak, she was still standing, her indecisive anger visible in the white around the knuckles. He waved the basket, feeling what felt like food and a soju bottle roll around in the bottom.

That jerked her towards him. “You’ll spill the soju.” She protested.

He raised an eyebrow. “Really?” He tried another experimental jiggle.

That brought her all the way to his side, one arm grabbing his wrist to stop the motion. “Stop.”

Her hand was cold, even through the sleeve of his jacket, almost burningly numb, but her breath was hot against his cheek as she exhaled shakily. Amused, he realized she’d fight him if she thought she stood a chance. Maybe even if she thought she didn’t. “Aish, you’re freezing.” He clucked his tongue in reprimand, and shook her off. “Let’s get you somewhere warm.”

“Such as where?”

He feigned innocent bewilderment. “The Kim household, of course. Where else?”

That knocked the breath out of her. “H-how did you know where I was going?”

He lifted a hand to his heart. “Because I have been sent by them, of course.” He lied smoothly, knowing the very slickness of his performance would throw her off-balance. “Lady Kim remembers your mother and her skills with great fondness. She sent me to enquire after her well-being. Imagine my surprise to encounter her daughter walking in the direction from which I’ve come, attired splendidly and carrying a basket of food. Where else would she be going but to the Kim’s? Surely, you don’t think me such an idiot to not put two and two together? Really, I’m offended.”

Cha Eun Sang was having none of it. “How did you know who I was?”

He let a wicked smile slide free. “Because I have heard Cha Eun Sang described as the most beautiful girl for miles.” He leaned down, letting his breath glide across her ear, letting his eyes become intense, his voice an intimate whisper. “I would have to be blind not to recognize you.”

She pulled back, wiping a hand across her ear, smearing away his very breath on her. “You’re a mad man, aren’t you? Aish, you expect me to believe people hire you? To do actual work?”

He laughed. “They pay me in compliments. Mad men need their vanity soothed, you know, and it’s cheap pay, when you think about it.”

Eun Sang rolled her eyes heavenwards. “Just my luck. A mad man in the woods who won’t let me carry my own basket.”

“It could be worse.” He encouraged. “Just think. I could have been a wolf.”

Her eyes flicked sharply to his, and then away, as if he had said something that struck a chord, and he felt a deep thrum of satisfaction. So she had recognized him—maybe just a little, but enough.

“Shall we go? The lady will want to meet you. And as employers go, she is rather demanding.”

Eun Sang exhaled sharply, still unwilling to go with him, but her worst fears allayed.

“I’ll shake the basket again.” He threatened.

“I’ll come, I’ll come!” She began walking hurriedly.

“Such a good little Cha Eun Sang.” Young Do fell into step beside her, matching his length-eating stride to her smaller steps. “Almost trainable.”

That earned him another glare from under thick lashes, before she turned her head away, back into the folds of her hood. Her hands were still gripping the side of the cloak, the bright yellow vivid against the white and black of her backdrop.

Young Do glanced up, measuring the time he had left. Enough, he reasoned, to drop Eun Sang off with her basket, do his reconnaissance, and slip back into the forest. He allowed himself a self-satisfied grin.

“So, does my lady look forward to renewing her acquaintance with the Kims?”

Another quick look from the girl beside him before she retired into the hiding space provided by the hood. “What do you mean?”

“Your old friendship with the young lord of the house, of course.”

This time she was entirely startled. “Who?”

“Young Master Kim! An old childhood friend, I understand.”

“I’ve never met him in my life.” She said shortly.

“Not what I’ve been led to understand, little Cha Eun Sang.” He loaded every possible innuendo he could into the phrase.

At that she truly startled him. Perhaps the first time he’d been startled in fifteen years.

She wheeled sharply on one small heel, delivered a sharp kick to his ankle, and then, leaving him swearing in shock behind her, continued forwards.

She paused and looked back over her shoulder, brown eyes wide and innocent. “Coming?”


	4. Chapter Four

Choi Young Do walked in silence at her side, limping slightly and simmering noticeably.

Cha Eun Sang reflected that if he was a pot, his lid would be bouncing against the water pressure. She rather enjoyed that image, and began humming in a soft alto to herself.

He shot her a dark look. She smiled sunnily in response.

She wasn’t sure what to make of her undesired escort. He was by turns alarming and courteous, flirtatious and self-contained, humorous and far too serious. He was an enigma. Eun Sang didn’t like riddles, and even less people who spoke in them. She didn’t have time to wrangle with the unpredictable. The sooner he took himself off, the easier she’d breathe.

Fortunately, it was not a long walk through the woods to the Kim household. Soon enough they’d broken free from the embrace of the trees into the spaciously-set grounds that surrounded the large house.

Eun Sang checked at the sight of it, somehow surprised at the sight of life. For most of her lifetime, it had been shut up and abandoned, prey to creeping ivy and nesting birds. But now servants were vigorously scrubbing windows and a set of gardeners, despite the cold, were attacking the brown tendrils with a determined series of glinting shears.

“What a beautiful sight.” Young Do spoke for the first time since she’d kicked him. “The hands of men tearing away the ravages of nature. I find my soul refreshed at the very thought.”

Eun Sang shot him a suspicious look, hearing the laces of iron that curled around his voice. “Your employers must muzzle you when you’re in their presence.”

His eyes glinted. “They try.”

She sniffed. “Their hands are probably covered with your bite marks.”

At that he smiled, and his canines, slightly pointed in the rapidly descending sun, sparked. “Every dog has a taste for blood in him. You wouldn’t deny me my games, surely?”

There were the riddles again. Eun Sang rolled her eyes, and walked to the great gate that guarded the courtyard. She waited a moment, and then looked sideways impatiently.

Choi Young Do lifted an eyebrow at her. “What?”

“Never mind.” She sighed. She should have known. Rapping her fingers smartly against the wood, she rocked back on her heels to wait for a response. “I could take my basket now.” She suggested, after a moment.

He clicked his tongue at her. “Let a lady carry a basket into the presence of my lovely mistress? I thought we were playing with manners.”

The gate opened at that moment, and Young Do swept her in swiftly past the startled servant not allowing her chance for a retort. She opened her mouth, her desire to have the last word heavier than her need to appear polite, but Young Do beat her to that as well.

He lifted the basket at the servant, quirked his eyebrows meaningfully, the servant nodded with comprehension, and with that the irritating man was gone, vanishing into the bustle of the busy household. Presumably off to the kitchen to present her offering, and hopefully not off to stuff his face with her carefully prepared food.

Eun Sang stared after him, feeling a small surge of fury ripple beneath her skin. Disappearing was not, she felt, playing fair.

She glared at the inoffensive servant who had so innocently been the vehicle for Young Do’s escape.

The servant quailed slightly.

Eun Sang modified her expression, trying a weak excuse for a smile. “My name is Cha Eun Sang. I’ve come to pay my respects?”

The servant, apparently reassured, smiled back somewhat timidly. “Of course. Well-wishers are being received in the atrium. Follow me?”

Eun Sang followed the young man from the courtyard, into the equally busy house. She was reminded of an ant-hill upended with a stick—a seething mass of energy, frantically trying to right the structural wrongs.

She stifled a smile, and stepped through the doors the servant gestured at.

Once within though, she froze with surprise.

She had expected a graciously aging woman, seated in serenity before her callers.

Instead a lethargic looking young man lounged across a throne-like chair, idly kicking at a pillar. His chin was propped on his hand, and he tilted it marginally to get a look at her as she entered.

She frowned. He frowned back, mirroring her.

“Who are you?” She demanded without thinking.

He arched an eyebrow back at her. “Who are you?”

“Cha Eun Sang. I’ve come to pay my respects to the lady of the house.”

A small smile jilted across his lips, and he swung himself upright. He was a lanky soul—not as hungrily lean as her escort, perhaps, but still long and spare. Brown hair flopped into his eyes as he moved.

He cupped his chin in his palms, resting his elbows on his knees. “Haven’t you heard? I don’t have a mother. There is no lady of the house.” He looked so casual saying it, it was as if he was saying he didn’t like a certain sauce on his fish.

“That…can’t be.” She said, mind flashing back to Young Do. What had he said? Something about his lovely mistress. She hadn’t imagined that, surely?

“No?” He grinned then. “Please do tell my father. He’ll be so pleased to hear it.”

His very flippancy jarred. Eun Sang tried to imagine joking about her mother’s death, and felt her teeth grate. She shook her head. “I apologize. There’s been some mistake. The servant-man who was sent to my mother’s house—“

“Your mother’s house?” The youth interrupted. “Who is your mother?”

“Park Hee Nam. He said your mother remembered her, and wanted to enquire after her well-being…”

“Can’t have been one of our men.” The youth shook his head regretfully. “The lady Kim has been dead these fifteen years.” He added, in a mild tone of apology, “There’s only myself and my brother left to carry on the ever-so-honorable house of Kim. I’m Kim Tan, you see. At your service.”


	5. Chapter Five

Choi Young Do deposited the basket neatly on the kitchen table, made a small bow to the head cook who waved him away, and then took himself off.

Masquerading as a servant to gain access to the Tan estate had been one of his better brilliant ideas. He could feel himself smiling. One passing servant looked at him, then away with an unnerved, high pitched giggle, and hustled forwards quickly.

Young Do let the smile linger. He enjoyed that effect. Even Eun Sang had shivered beneath it. And she, he knew now from very practical experience, preferred to kick rather than shiver.

His ankle still smarted slightly. “Crazy.” He muttered. Who went and kicked a wolf? Even if they thought it was only a tamed housepet, didn’t the eyes warn them away? “Crazy, crazy.” He said again, shaking his head, and continued up the stairs.

The upper floor was quieter than the downstairs, sound muted by draped curtains that had yet to be pulled back entirely. Apparently these auxiliary rooms were last on the duty list for the overworked staff.

Perfect.

He traced a finger along a wall made entirely of windows, collecting dust as he walked. Human styles and fashions didn’t interest him. He thought for the most part that they were crude, unrefined. Even Eun Sang’s dress, made to exacting human standards, had struck him as too gaudy.

But he had to admit, this house had been built in a gracious style that reminded him vividly of something. Clear light falling through the bottom of a pond, he thought perhaps. Something natural and unforced. Whoever had commissioned it had been a person of style and taste…perhaps even someone with blood from his world.

It happened sometimes. Seelie or Unseelie loving (or forcing—that happened sometimes, too) a human. He’d never understood that.

He hummed quietly as he meandered, creating a mental map of the layout of the house. When a stray servant did pass by, he simply turned his head, or squinted over a threadbare curtain, and they went on, assuming he was a new hire.

It was too bad human vaults were kept on the main floor, where his actions would most definitely have been noted, or he would have made his try today, so perfect was his disguise. He wouldn’t be able to pull it off again, unfortunately. The gatekeeper had caught a good look at his face, so he’d have to stick to the original plan. Inconvenient, that.

He made a quick right down a hall he calculated to be above the most likely place for the vault, and stopped still, before fading backwards into the shadows.

A man stood at a window embrasure reading a letter, dangerously still. Young Do knew what it meant when a predator went that still. It meant he had spotted his prey.

The man must have finished what he was reading because he looked up, out the window, affording an excellent view of his profile. Young Do let out a silent whistle. He had known Kim Tan was coming back. But Kim Won as well? Trouble was brewing.

All the better for him. It made the odds of his success that much higher.

In a sudden, sharp movement, Kim Won crumpled the paper and flung it to the side. Turning abruptly on his heel, he strode down the passage, disappearing into a far room with the solid thud of a door.

Young Do emerged from the shadows, lips pursed in a satisfied smirk. Strolling casually down the hall, he came to a stop by the crumpled paper. Lazy now, feeling the surety of victory languorous in his veins, he stooped to pick it up.

Unfolded and held to the last stray catches of daylight, it proved even more interesting than he’d suspected.

Laughing soundlessly, he folded it once more, neatly this time, and tucked it away in a pocket. “You Kim boys, just self-destructing. You make my role too easy.”

Outside the window movement stirred in the courtyard, and Young Do stepped sideways, hiding his face.

A small figure stormed out from the building to the gates, a vision in bright yellow, absolutely stiff with frozen fury. Young Do bit his lip to stifle a laugh.

Behind her came another figure, this time a tall young man, and Young Do’s laughter instantly died as the youth grabbed her shoulder, trying to stop her progress.

Young Do went quietly tense as the two engaged in an intense conversation, before she shook him off at last and walked out the gates, head held high. Both men watched until she was out of sight, and then the one below returned inside, head tucked thoughtfully.

Young Do could feel the growl rising in his throat before he heard it. 

It was his challenge to make her burn, and no one else’s involvement was appreciated.

Gradually the tenseness faded until he was relaxed and thoughtful once more, his fingers tapping a tattoo against the glass. Eun Sang was not threatened by some stranger, he reasoned with himself. The chase hadn’t been altered by one altercation.

Outside the last sliver of sun was slipping below the horizon. Soon the moon would rise. Young Do’s fingers beat a more rapid rhythm at the thought. A quicksilver moon, full and bright. His skin itched, suddenly too hot and heavy. He wanted ice, and snow, and the new-turned color of a winter night.

Footsteps echoed down the hall, and his head whipped round to find a maid whose face went pale with fear at the sight of his face.

Surprised, he turned and caught his own reflection in the glass—fiery yellow eyes above bruised, starved shadows. He relaxed, feeling a sensation of release. “Hello, old friend.” He murmured to the reflection, before turning a wildfire smile on the maid. “Which is the fastest way out?”


	6. Chapter Six

Once outside the gates of the Kim mansion, Eun Sang paused and took a deep breath, trying to sort through everything—Young Do in the forest stealing her basket, the strange escort to the Kim house, her only slightly less strange interview with Kim Tan afterwards, and the way it had dashed all her hopes.

No lady of the house! No one to sew extravagant, beautiful dresses for! Her mother—and here Eun Sang’s breath caught in her chest—her mother would be so disappointed.

And who on earth was Choi Young Do? Why had he said that lady Kim was his mistress?

It was all too strange. She put a hand to her head. And then Kim Tan—Lord Kim, she supposed—had made everything worse by insinuating she’d imagined Choi Young Do. Eun Sang had a good brain, but she was fairly positive it would take someone of either flashing brilliance or complete idiocy to dream up someone quite so…vivid. And infuriating. And ridiculous.

Lord Kim had chased after her and apologized, promised he hadn’t meant an insult, but she’d barely kept herself from telling him to go back to the capital and stay there. How dare he suggest she was crazy?

Humiliation washed over her thinking back over it. She must have sounded crazy, really. A strange dark man she’d never seen before forcing her to let him carry her basket, and then disappearing?

Had she imagined Choi Young Do? Was that possible?

Slowly, she started to walk, turning it over in her head.

A low buzzing noise sounded by her ear, and annoyed, she swatted at it.

“Ow.” A voice said in surprise, and then, “Ow!” again, in mounting indignation.

She turned, eyed widening. “Chan Young! What are you doing here?”

“Trying,” he said with dignity, “to say hello. Hi.” He added, eyes reproachful over the hand nursing his nose.

“Hi to you too.” She smiled without thinking. That was how it was with Chan Young. He was the gentlest, kindest person she’d ever met outside of her mother, and somehow, his very presence made her gentler and kinder too.

He gestured with a free hand behind to the house she’d just left. “Making your formal call as well?” He pursed his lips in an impressed whistle taking in her dress. “Your mother is truly amazing, Eun Sang. Truly. The Emperor ought to have her sewing all his clothes.”

“You know that, and I know that, but does the Emperor?” She sighed, feeling the dejection anew. “Why did no one know Lady Kim was dead?”

His eyes widened. “Lady Kim is dead?”

“Didn’t they tell you inside?” She was surprised. Was it some kind of secret?

“No! The only people I saw were a bunch of servants too busy to talk to a lowly farmer’s son and a bailiff who looked at me as if he suspected me of stealing his pigs. Lady Kim’s death should have been announced to the neighborhood! Do you know when it happened?”

Thoughtfully she linked arms with her oldest and best friend as they walked. “She’s been dead for a while I think. Which means…what, her oldest son is our new lord? Would there be a reason they wouldn’t want us to know that?”

It was Chan Young’s turn to look thoughtful. He started to say something, then stopped. “Hmmm.” Was all he said, noncommittally.

“Ya, you know something!” She accused, pulling free, and putting herself in front of him.

He linked their arms once more and ploughed forward determinedly into the safe shadows of the trees. Stopping, he looked at her sideways. “You can’t tell anyone this.”

“That,” she told him severely, “is insulting.”

His smile when it came was sheepish. “Fair enough. Eun Sang, do you remember the last time the Kim’s were in residence?”

“No.” She said blankly. She hadn’t known they ever had been in her lifetime.

“We were very small. Only a few years old. Lady Kim…she was rebellious. She didn’t play by the rules all the time. Some people say…some people say…”

“What?” What could people say that was required this much secrecy?

“They say,” he said all in a rush, “that she came here because she had had an illegitimate child, and the emperor banished her from court for a time. So she came here, with him, leaving her older, legitimate son in the city.”

Eun Sang’s eyes widened. This was scandalous indeed. “But what does that have to do with now?”

“Well.” His brow furrowed, and he moved to keep walking. She followed him as they navigated the slippery path through the trees. “I’m thinking…if she died and left her property to the illegitimate son, and the legitimate one contested it…that would be a reason, wouldn’t it? Because then no one would know who the new lord is.”

Eun Sang nodded along. “That would make sense.”

He looked up. “It’s just a guess. I don’t know anything…just something the bailiff said, about conflict in the house…” He trailed off, and then blinked. “It’s dark.”

“Hm? Yes? The sun set. It does that.” Eun Sang blinked in the face of his non sequitur.

“Your mother,” he said in a tone of abject horror, “will kill me for taking you through the forest at night.”

Eun Sang broke into laughter. “Chan Young, she loves you! She’ll probably bake you a cake and scold me for leading you astray! Besides–”

“Don’t say it!” He held up his hands in plea. “Don’t say it, Eun Sang!”

She leaned forwards, still giggling. “What. Is. The. Worst. That. Could. Happen?” She enunciated clearly. If one didn’t count having one’s basket semi-stolen by a madman, she amended mentally. Or hallucinating it all. Whichever.

There was a sharp whirring sound, and a dull thunk. Eyes wide, the two youngsters turned to stare between them where the long, narrow shaft of an arrow was still quivering, its point buried deep in the tree trunk by their head.

“You had to say it.” Chan Young said in resignation.


	7. Chapter 7

“Not the time!” Eun Sang gasped in response to Chan Young, and grabbed his wrist to pull him to her side, darting frantic looks side to side to see where the arrow had originated.

But the darkening wood was silent, abandoned.

“Not good.” Chan Young’s arm was limp in her grasp, his whole body relaxed…a sure sign that his mind wasn’t.

Another arrow came winging at them, slicing past Eun Sang’s ear.

“Not good at all.” He decided firmly.

“You think?” She snapped, and still gripping his wrist firmly, began to run, tugging him along behind.

Her skirts hampered her feet, tripping her in the already threatening patches of snow. With her free hand she tugged with mounting desperation at her heavy clothing. Why oh why had she decided there would be no bandits in the forest when any sane person would have played it safe? Why oh why did Chan Young have to be the only other person in town besides herself not frightened of stories of ghosts and the forest?

Chan Young, with his longer legs, had already pulled slightly ahead, and turned her wrist-grab into a secure tangle of their fingers. He ducked sideways, pulling her with him in a quick darting motion through the snug embrasure between two close-growing trees.

Yet another arrow sang after them, flying straight and true between the trunks.

“How the hell are they doing that?” She panted.

“You’re in yellow!” Chan Young pointed out. “You’re a moving landmark! What did you expect? Come on!”

Together they slipped and slid down the side of a steep bank. Eun Sang could feel snow seeping through her stockings, numbing her toes and making her steps even trickier. Chan Young was still steady, entirely focused on escape from their pursuers.

At the bottom, an icy stream fluttered, a weak winter heartbeat. They splashed through, hems dragging and catching at the ice chunks that lingered. On the other side, Chan Young paused, looking back as they dodged again behind another large tree trunk.

“Lost them?” Eun Sang queried, just as the tell-tale scrape of leafless shrub branches on the other side of the stream answered her question.

“Sshh.” Chan Young drew her close, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. She threaded her fingers through his again, for comfort this time.

Breathless, they listened. The scrape of wood…the crunch of boots. A slithering noise that sounded like someone descending the hill in their wake.

To Eun Sang it was worse, because those were the only noises in the now completely dark night. A featureless, silent pursuer. It ached up her spine, a dull horror.

She glanced upwards, just able to make out Chan Young’s chin, tilted as he listened furiously, trying so hard to think of a way out. Overpower their mysterious archer as he rounded the tree? Make a break for it and hope their luck held? Or…

Eun Sang loosened their fingers slightly. Chan Young didn’t notice, still wrapped in his thoughts, so she freed her hand entirely. At that he did look down, and in the bright light of the full moon, Eun Sang could see the dawning horror in his face as he saw what she was about to do.

“See you back home.” She whispered, taking her step backwards, away from the precarious shelter of the trunk.

He made a desperate grab for her, his answer so clear in his eyes—“Don’t be stupid!”—but he wasn’t fast enough. Not to catch the nimblest girl in the province.

Her cloak glowed in the moonlight, obvious to their hunter.

Eun Sang dragged in a deep breath, turned, and began running, the speed of her passing pushing the hood off her face, leaving her hair streaming behind her. “Follow me, follow me, follow me.” She chanted. All she had was silence behind her, and fear gripped her heart that somehow, their hunter had missed her, was still closing in on a frozen Chan Young.

Until there was a whistle of noise, a thud that broke the ragged rhythm of her breathing, and the blooming of a fiery rose of pain in her right shoulder just as she broke through the trees into a bare clearing. She couldn’t resist the squeak of pain, any more than she could resist her sudden fall.

Huddled in the snow, in her lake of yellow cloth and silver snow, she gripped her shoulder the shaft of the murderous arrow rough against her fingers. Her teeth sunk into her lower lip until she could taste blood. Were those going to be her last sensations, she wondered dazedly. The flavor of blood, the texture of her death?

Footsteps crunched closer.

“I have nothing.” She yelled defiantly into the hush. “No money. You’ve wasted your arrows.”

The footsteps stopped, then resumed.

“Don’t you understand?” She shouted once more. “Or are you just stupid? What’s the point in robbing me?” To her horror, she could feel the warm weight of tears against her cheeks. She didn’t want to die crying. “You’re a fool, wasting your time. A fool who deserves to be hungry in a forest. Such a fool.” Was she talking to herself or her murderer? “Such a fool.” She repeated, voice low.

But if she was going to die, she wasn’t going to meet it with head bowed. She kept it lifted, tears glinting rebelliously on her face, blood flowing down her fingers. To think, she’d been frightened of Choi Young Do that afternoon! She’d take a wolf over a man, she was beginning to think. Wolves spoke riddles, but they didn’t play games with death like this.

Something large moved in the periphery of her vision. She craned sideways to catch a better look, but it was already gone. A darting shadow moved beyond her other side, and she turned again, again too late.

The footsteps suddenly stopped, and there was something in this new silence that had an air of uncertainty to it. Eun Sang huddled deeper into her cloak, taking the closest thing to her mother’s embrace she could get. Had she acquired a new enemy in the night, or was this a new shadow, a new friend, as unlikely as that seemed?

For two unsteady heartbeats, all there was was moonlight, snow, and shadows that moved in the wake of a shuddering wind.

And then her small snowy clearing erupted into a snarling, seething mass.

One shadow detached itself from the rest to fling itself at another, darker patch, and in their wake, the torn up snow made a blizzard. Eun Sang flung herself sideways, away from the war, and landed heavily on her injured shoulder.

The pain was intense enough to force a brief darkness over her eyes. She had to fight to stay conscious against the hurt, and when her own battle was over, so was the war.

All that remained was torn up ground and scarred snow.

Carefully, she hauled herself upright, still cradling her aching shoulder.

Something moved in the circle of trees beyond her own personal war zone—the victor, she presumed.

Whether it was friend or foe, Eun Sang would rather see its face. “Come out.” She said, fairly calmly for the situation, she felt.

Silence. Stillness.

“Ya, come out!” She called, beginning the long, wobbling struggle to her feet. Once erect, she felt marginally better, though lightheaded. She had to squint against the moonlight. “Come…out…” She tried again, but the lightheadedness seemed to suddenly double. Surprised, she wavered slightly on her feet.

There seemed, for such a small wound, to be quite a lot of pain. A burning sensation was spreading itself outward from the dripping bloody center, leaving a vague numbness in its wake.

Her knees buckled, and Eun Sang found herself sinking back the ground.

The shadow moved again, almost uneasily this time.

Eun Sang peered at it. “If you want to kill me, kill me. If you are friendly…please. Help.” She hated that word. It weighed like a stone on her tongue. But oh, if ever she’d needed it before, she needed it now. “Help.” She repeated, fuzzily. The numbness had spread to her tongue, and her eyes were losing focus. She found herself slumping sideways, down into the cool embrace of the snow.

As her eyes blurred close, she could just make out a large shape emerging from the trees.

Somehow, she wasn’t surprised. “Good wolf.” She smiled hazily, and let unconsciousness take her.


	8. Chapter 8

Light tickled the edges of Eun Sang’s awareness.

Drowsily she followed it all the way to the surface of sleep, and then beyond. But breaking through that placid surface was like having a cold bucket of water dashed across her face.

Waking with a sharp gasp, she tried to sit upright, all the memories of her chase in the snow as vivid and adrenaline inducing as they were the moment she had collapsed. But she got no further than her elbows before her body made its protest known.

Every inch of her was sore, as if she’d been beaten by a series of overly muscular men with large sticks. She gasped again, unable to help it, and fell backwards, wincing. Catching her breath she looked up at the ceiling.

Wait, no. That was wrong. It wasn’t a ceiling as she knew it. Squinting in the dim light, Eun Sang made out a rough stone curve, as if she were in a cave.

Careful now, aware that her body had set some sort of limitation on her, she turned her head to the side on her pillow.

And had to bite back her surprise with an intense violence.

Sitting—no, lounging—in a carved armchair a few yards away was the long figure of Choi Young Do. His legs were stuck out before him crossed at the ankle, his hands draped lazily over the armrests. One indolent finger traced a pattern on the wood, and she unwillingly followed the line of that finger up his arm, across the shoulder, up the neck, and at last, worst of all, to the lean face of her taunting-eyed observer. One side of his mouth was swooped in a smirk, his eyes all too knowing as he watched her watching him. Firelight flickered across his face, keeping half of it in shadow, making him more unreadable than ever.

“What happened?” She asked, and then frowned at how rough her voice sounded. Gingerly, she pressed her fingertips to her throat, and then touched them to her right shoulder, which seemed to be the focus of all her pain. Prodding fingers found a neat bundle of bandages beneath her shift.

Her shift?

“You were sick.” His smirk grew slightly wider, as if he enjoyed her vulnerability.

She narrowed her eyes at him, memories pushing themselves forward. “There was an arrow. And there was…” What had there been? A giant shadow, emerging from the trees, with eyes that glowed like golden coins. “There was a—“

“Hallucinations.” He said smoothly, standing in one fluid motion and approaching the bed. “The arrow was poisoned. You were seeing things for quite a while there.” In a professional style, he reached for her wrist.

She pulled it away, cradling it suspiciously against her chest. “You’ve been taking care of me? Did you…did you undress me?”

“So distrustful, this patient. And I’ve been such a good doctor.” His eyebrow quirked in its amused fashion, as if everything she said and did were a joke put on for his especial amusement.

It made her furious. “How long have I been unconscious?”

He studied his fingers. “Two days. Now, if I may?” He reached for her wrist again.

Shocked, she let him take it this time. Two whole days! “My mother…Yoon Chan Young…they must be so worried!”

His fingers were unexpectedly hot on her skin, oddly strong yet tender against her newly sensitive self. “They must be.” He agreed, eyes shut as he counted the beats of her pulse.

“You didn’t take me to them? Why not?”

One eye opened, severity in its expression. “Did you expect me to carry you all the way to town? It’s a far walk, and you needed immediate care. Now, if you please. Shush. Or else.” The eye closed in finality.

Eun Sang obediently shushed, still shaken by her loss of time.

After a few moments, he returned her wrist to her side. It felt strangely cold with the intense heat of his hand gone from it. She wrapped her own fingers around it, pulling it to her chest. “You saw the robber? Was it you who chased him away?”

Choi Young Do tilted his head, eyes quizzical. “Is that what it was? A robber?”

She flushed, as if she had said something stupid. But of course she hadn’t. “What else could it have been?”

He shrugged, shoulder graceful beneath the thin white cloth of his shirt, and turned away as if the question no longer interested him. “What else?”

He moved to a table set to the side of the cave, on which a variety of substances and bowls sat. His hands darted through the various ingredients with a surety that reminded Eun Sang of her mother at her needle and cloth.

With his back turned to her, Eun Sang had a better chance to study her surroundings, and it was most definitely a cave. A large one it looked like, since it stretched in one direction into long shadow. In the other, at a comfortable remove, a large dark cloth stretched across what she assumed was the entrance, billowing slightly in stray breezes. But around them a small hollow of light and warmth had been made by what looked like a natural flue set into the rock, where a fire burned, and various candleholders set into the walls from which sweet-scented candles were suspended. As a room, it was oddly comfortable. There was the bed she lay on, heaped with quilts, and a carpet across the rock that looked suspiciously luxurious—all bright red and gold even in the dim light. Dried flowers and herbs were scattered across the floor, adding to the perfume of candle and fire. There was the table, with its various paraphernalia, and a bookshelf at a safe remove from the fire well-stocked with leather-bound books. Near it, a makeshift bed had been arranged of blankets and pillows. On the opposite wall, near Young Do’s unexpectedly elaborate chair, hung a silver mirror over a small table holding a basin and ewer. Several cupboards and a sturdy wooden wardrobe completed the furnishings.

It wasn’t just a cave, Eun Sang realized blankly. It was a home.

The make-shift bed made her squirm in her own comfortable settings as she realized she had dispossessed her host. A wash of guilt spread across her. Whoever Choi Young Do was—liar, thief, some kind of exile—he had saved her life, and she had greeted him with suspicion and anger. Justified, it may have been, but she was her mother’s daughter. Kindness, she had been taught, could come hidden in many vessels, and should always be saluted.

She cleared her throat.

The back of her rescuer remained unmoved.

She cleared her throat again.

One questioning eye appeared over a shoulder. “Are you choking to death?” Young Do inquired pleasantly.

“I wanted…to say thank you.” She managed, the words stiff and unwieldy. “You…saved me.”

The eyebrow arched, and he turned away. After a moment, he turned, revealing a bowl in his hands. He approached her bed, and sat without asking, eyes raking over her appraisingly.

Defensive, she pulled herself to an awkward sitting position. It still hurt, but moving slowly made it bearable. “What?”

“Nothing.” He presented the bowl. “Take your medicine like a good girl.”

“What’s in it?”

“What are you thinking? That I saved you, just to poison you?”

Her gratitude shriveled and died a pauper’s death. She eyed him coldly. “How would I know? You are the madman, after all. A lying madman, I might add.”

He smiled with appreciation. “That sounds more like you. You were worrying me for a moment. I thought I might not have gotten all the poison out of your system.” He shoved the bowl at her. “Now drink this.”

She set her lip mutinously. “Not until I know what’s in it.”

He grimaced. “Aish. I take it back. I like you better when you were hailing me as your savior. Here. It’s just a collection of fortifiers, with some pain killers to dull the soreness.” He reeled off a list of herbs she didn’t know, and then offered the bowl again. “If it makes you feel better, if you ever save me from imminent death, you can make me drink all kinds of awful things.”

That was actually a rather pleasant idea, and it forced a reluctant smile to her lips.

“Better.” He nodded approvingly. He raised one long finger and touched her, very gently, very teasingly, at the furrow between her brows. “I thought all you knew how to do was scowl.” He smoothed away the line and made as if to pull his hand away…but then let it linger. He looked fascinated, as if he had found something strange in an unexpected place, unaware how much it showed on his face. He traced the line of her eyebrows, like a man who had never looked another human being in the face before. His hand strayed down, following the line of her cheek with his fingertips, to her jaw, and then at last to her neck, where her pulse jumped when his fingers found it. His hand settled there, cupped around the leap of blood, fingers trailing around to the nape of her neck.

For some reason, Eun Sang couldn’t breathe. His skin was hot on hers again, hot as fire. His face was entirely too close, his eyes entirely too deep. Staring into them, she had the most terrifying sensation that she knew them. That she had seen them before. Many times. As many times as she looked in the mirror, into her own reflection. There were strands of gold buried deep within them, glimmering streaks of light that befuddled her, reminded her of her hallucinations under the poison, in which a golden-eyed wolf had carried her to a place of sanctuary and warmth. It was like there was a magnet buried in those eyes, drawing her cold north to his warm south, however much she disliked it…

They recoiled at the same time, so hard that she actually snapped the back of her head against the headboard and he nearly fell to a sprawl off the other end. He caught himself just in time, so graceful he didn’t even spill the medicine.

But gone was her mildly derisive host. In its place was a being made of raw…something. His hands were clenched around the bowl, and his face wore an expression of intensity that made her shrink involuntarily. “How—“He began, then shook his head. “Gods, stupid question.” He shoved the bowl in her hands. “Drink.”

He stood, pale now, with frighteningly dark circles beneath his eyes. He went to the curtain at the end of the cave, and Eun Sang, now thoroughly unnerved, found herself asking “Where are you going?”

When he looked back, she regretted having asked. He looked just as he had when she had first encountered him in the forest—feral. His smile, when it came, wasn’t even mocking. It was hungry. “Don’t ask questions which have answers you won’t like.”

And he was gone, with a swish of the curtain that brought with it a dash of cold to numb away the heat of where his touch had been.


	9. Chapter 9

Choi Young Do let the change take him, sweeping away all the emotions—that flush of wanting, the irresistible urge to take what was, according to every instinct he owned, his by right. 

When his paws hit the snow, he took off, leaving those delicious frost marks on his soul behind.

It took him much longer than he’d expected, even under a full moon, to lose the madness. He had to run for miles, soaking in the silence, the cold, the light and shadow, before his logic began to reassert itself and he was no longer fighting the urge to go back to the cave and pin Eun Sang to that bed, to tell her exactly how they were connected, to make sure she felt exactly the same draw he did, and to give into it.

The icy burn of the winter night into his lungs eventually brought him to a breath-heavy halt in the shadow of some trees. He had brought himself, unsurprisingly, to the far edge of the Kim property, to the brook that dashed down a small gorge. The place it had all started.

He rested his large head against the rough bark of a nearby tree, and closed his eyes. It was exactly that connection, unnatural and unreal, that had to keep him on his guard. These feelings, he reminded himself sternly, weren’t real.

But gods, they felt real. He hadn’t expected that. He hadn’t realized how much his skin against hers, the scent of her, the curve of her, the light of her eyes, would affect him. He had thought fifteen years of detached observation through his mirror had prepared him. He had thought to make her pay him a debt, to burn her so badly she would bear scorch marks the rest of her life. He hadn’t thought she could send ice water flurrying through his veins, numbing him to everything but her.

He had never been so wrong.

Maybe he hadn’t been detached enough. Maybe he had gone about this all wrong. Maybe he should have…done what? What else could he have done? 

He wanted revenge, but more than that, he needed Eun Sang for his plan to succeed. Her encounter in the forest with the hunter in the forest had been fortuitous. He needed time with her, and he had been granted it. Her injury had been bad—very bad indeed. She would be weak for a while, long enough for him to convince her to do what he needed, whether by threats or by friendship.

He just hadn’t realized that time with her would be so dangerous.

He heaved a large sigh, and shook out his rough mane of fur. He had come this far. He couldn’t turn back. He would fix this—and soon. It was almost over. He could handle this. He bundle these irresponsible emotions away.

In the meantime—it was a full moon, and he thought he knew just the thing to distract himself.

Saliva slipped across his fangs.

Tender things should run in the night when he was on the prowl.

He leaped forward.

//

Eun Sang had drunk her medicine, swallowing it despite its bitter taste, and then laid back, like a good patient, to try and sleep.

But the leaping shadows of the sinking fire kept her awake, painting images on the cave roof. She traced images of houses and trees, a runaway carriage, a drooping rose in the wavering light…until she found herself sketching out the outline of a wolf. At that, she shivered and rolled over on her side, pulling the blankets up over her shoulders.

That was, it turned out, even worse, because her eyes were left to stare unfocusedly at the rock in front of her nose while her mind ran away with her.

The way Young Do looked, sounded, his touch…aish, what was wrong with her? The places where he hands had rested now felt as if they would never be warm again, as if nothing else could compare with the heat he generated.

She curled resolutely up in a ball, forcing her core to build up a center of heat around her. When her strange host got back, she would try to thank him again, and then ask for the nearest way home. She would crawl there if it meant getting away from whatever this was.

//

When she woke up, she was disoriented, both by the chill and the strange quality of the light. For a moment she lay there, wondering, before it all came crashing back on her.

She closed her eyes briefly, and then opened them again, wondering if her host was observing her again.

But there was no one in the carved chair opposite the bed.

Carefully Eun Sang tested her body, and found to her surprise that whatever Young Do had given her in that medicine had helped, because she was no longer anywhere near as sore. She managed to sit upright with a minimum of pain.

That was when she finally spotted him. He was sprawled in his makeshift bed, an impossibly lengthy, spider-elegant creature. His eyes were closed, eyelashes creating feathery shadows against the paleness of his face. One arm was outflung, palm open, fingers beckoning. In sleep he looked harmless. Child-like even. She had to fight an unreasonable desire to stroke his head, comb her fingers through his hair.

But that sort of thing, she reminded herself firmly, was not to be tolerated or encouraged. No more touching, for even the most innocent of reasons. She was fine—he didn’t need to take her pulse anymore. He most certainly didn’t need to touch her cheek, her jaw, her pulse, or her lips…

What was wrong with her? She had never thought this way before. She had never been dizzy over a mere memory, a mere thought for what could have been, never wanted to imagine what a man’s mouth might feel like. Was that even possible, to get light-headed over a thought?

She was Cha Eun Sang, an acknowledged creature of ice. Boys had chased her, and she had flung cold water over their heads without a second thought.

God, she didn’t even like this man!

She pushed the night away with renewed determination, and busied herself experimenting with standing. The room was colder than it had been the previous night, due in equal part to the death of the fire at some point in the early morning hours and the fact that the door-curtain was half open, letting in both light and the winter morning air. But on the positive side, her own two feet held her upright, her wobbling slight at best.

Walking was slightly more difficult she found as she tried an experimental hobble to the fireplace, but she got there in the end. She propped her hands against the rock above the fireplace, and gave into the desire to grin at her own success. Like her mother told her—sometimes, it was the small things.

But the thought of her mother wiped her smile away quickly. She must be so worried. Eun Sang could see her pacing in their small cottage, wringing her calloused hands, with Yoon Chan Young slumped in a despairing huddle by the door. He would blame himself, get lost torturing himself for letting her slip out of his grasp. He would be haunted.

She needed to get home.

She turned her head slightly to look at her host, to find his eyes open and watching her. It gave her goosebumps, that cool, analytical look.

She flushed, remembering she was only in her shift and that he was the one who had taken the rest of her clothing.

He pushed himself upright until his back was propped against his bookshelf, his eyes never moving from her. He rested an elbow on one updrawn knee, the other leg stretched out. His silence was unnerving.

“I feel much better today.” She said, the silence weighing too heavily.

He tilted his head to the side.

She swallowed. “Thank you. Again. For all you’ve done. But I need to get home. My mother—“

“Will have to wait.” His voice was smooth as the silk of her yellow dress.

“What?”

“You’re still weak. You can’t make the walk back.”

“I can make it.”

“You could barely walk to the fireplace. I can’t see you hiking through snow and ice. Can you?”

His sheer calm was infuriating. “Where are we, the middle of the forest? Why do you live so far out?”

“Some of us like our privacy.” He stretched, one long cat-ripple, and stood.

She wanted to take a step closer, to challenge him, to demand what had driven him to the fringes of humanity. She wanted to invade his space. She wanted—and this was frightening—to feel that heat off of him again, burning into her blood and bone. To see herself again in his eyes. To make him angry and hungry, wild and dangerous.

She took a step backwards, keeping her hand against the bracing, cool stone.

“You’ve certainly got it.” She looked away.

There was a pause.

“Are you hungry?”

She glanced up, startled. “Are you suggesting you’ll cook for me?” She said without thinking.

“Ya, are you suggesting I can’t cook?” He seemed genuinely affronted.

“Um…” She blinked.

“Don’t you know? In this enlightened world we live in, women can be soldiers and men can be cooks. Don’t be so old-fashioned, Cha Eun Sang.”

She didn’t like the way he said her name. It sounded too intimate. She frowned at him, just on principle. “A lying madman who can cook just seemed too ridiculous.”

He assumed a pose of superiority. “That just goes to show you. I can be many things. I am,” he raised a finger like a lecturer, “complex.”

She stared in amazement. “That, Choi Young Do, is such an understatement.”

He smiled modestly. “Thank you.”


	10. Chapter 10

Choi Young Do got an unholy amount of satisfaction in watching Cha Eun Sang’s face when she realized he could, in fact, cook. His porridge, if he said so himself, was a work of art, and his bread…well. It wasn’t that bad.

It had taken him five years of unrelenting practice to make it all edible, but that was irrelevant.

He folded his legs and sat watching her. She gave him a look from under a loose fringe of hair as she swallowed a spoonful. He could read it easily—what was he doing just sitting watching her eat?

Fighting the urge to push the hair out of her face, he flipped his fingers casually against the floor. “When you’ve finished, back to bed with you.”

She would have fought him automatically, he could tell, except that she was still bone-tired. The food had put some color back in her face, but the shadows beneath her eyes were still deep, and her cheeks looked slightly hollow.

She had been lucky. Aconite poisoning made in the other realm was bad enough for fay like him, a death sentence. But for her, for a mere mortal, it should have burned her up like paper, turning her to ash before he’d had chance to try his antidotes. He credited it to her strength of will. She wanted to live, and by the gods, it would take more than one of the shadow-hunters to take that away from her.

He felt a flicker of admiration for that, and then, recognizing it, ruthlessly squashed it.

She finished her last spoonful, and put the bowl down on the ground.

“So?”

“The bread is burnt.” She held up a chunk.

He scowled. “Only a little.”

She scraped at one charcoaled side with a fingernail, and raised an eyebrow at him.

“Next time you can make the bread, then.”

“Next time, I will.” And then she caught her breath, as if she realized what she’d said.

He curled his fingers closed, not giving in to the smile prompted by the idea of Eun Sang helping him cook.

She looked at him, and then away. Awkwardly, she cleared her throat. “Thank you. Again.”

“You say those words like they taste like poison.” He couldn’t resist from teasing.

She shifted her eyes sideways. They were uncomfortable, caught between the protective cover of anger and the disconcerting vulnerability of gratitude. 

He felt his heart clench. Why did she have to keep doing that? Making him feel as if he understood her on her a level beyond the purely intellectual understanding of the observer. He didn’t like this sympathy of his that was sprouting up, wayward and determined.

He wanted to hate her.

Instead, he found himself wanting to hold her.

He cleared his own throat, and moved his eyes quickly away before a repeat of last night happened.

“You’re welcome. Now. Bed.”

They stood up together, and when she wavered slightly, he automatically steadied her. Damnit, he thought as the ice spiraled up his arm. His recoil didn’t much help her balance, and she had to grab against the wall to keep from her tipping over.

She gave him a look that told him quite clearly she thought he was an idiot.

He didn’t like the fact that he was starting to agree with her.

He made gentle shooing motions, like a farmer at a stubborn chicken. “I thought I said bed.”

She rolled her eyes, but followed his suggestion. She made it to his bed, and crawled under the blankets. There was half a pause, and then he heard the contented little sigh, like a cat that had found a comfortable nest.

Cautious, he moved closer. She had pulled the blankets up, and buried her face in the pillows.

He waged a brief, fierce war with the impulse, and then gave in. With the utmost care not to let himself touch her, he pulled the blankets up still further, until they nestled beneath her chin.

A corner of her mouth curled up, her soul already tucked into dreams.

It was beginning to occur to him that he was in a lot more trouble than he’d bargained for.

//

He’d waited half an hour, until her breath had settled into those of dreamers, steady and soothing.

Then he settled himself in his chair, turning it towards his mirror. Her sickness had eaten up his time, forcing him to miss checking up on the world outside. It had been a necessary sacrifice, but one he needed to rectify.

He swiped his fingers across the surface, calling up the people he was most interested in. First, Eun Sang’s family.

The cottage looked cold and damp, more so than usual. Chan Young was hunched in on himself on a chair by the door. Her mother paced, her face having gained new lines in a matter of days. Chan Young looked up as she passed him, his face haggard. He gripped at her hand.

“Ahjumma.” His voice was hoarse. “Let me help look for her. Please”

She shook her head vehemently, and waved at him, a clear denial. The men of the town are already searching. The forest is too dangerous for young ones like you. What if something happened to you as well? How would I face your father?

He shook his head right back at her. “I could find her, I know I could. What if the men didn’t find the place I told them? What if they’re going in circles in the completely wrong part of the forest?”

She placed her hands comfortingly on his shoulders, the mother in her shining even in this darkest moment. They’ll find her. Don’t blame yourself, Chan Young. This is not your fault.

Chan Young’s face cracked in the presence of so much love and forgiveness, and tears started to seep their way through. He wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in her midsection. The sobbing was ugly, wrecked, that of a boy who thought he’d betrayed those he loved best. She wrapped her own arms around his shoulders, cradling him like an infant

Young Do leaned back, weary yet dispassionate. It was a pity, but it couldn’t be helped.

He touched the mirror again.

This time he sought the Kims’ palatial residence.

A long breakfast table was loaded with food—more than two men could possibly ever consume for one meal. Tan was sitting sideways on his chair, inattentively peeling a pomegranate. His brother sat opposite him, separated the width of the gleaming surface. Won wasn’t eating. He was watching his younger sibling with narrowed eyes instead, as if the sheer level of his hate was nourishment enough.

Tan looked up, caught his brother staring at him, and smiled flippantly. “Poor night’s rest, hyung?”

Won cracked a cold smile. “Only through worrying over you.”

Tan’s smile in return struck Young Do as rather broken. “How kind. But please don’t. I’ve hunted worse things than wolf.”

Young Do sat upright.

“Not man-eaters.”

“No. But all creatures die alike, if you stick a spear through their throats.”

Won’s smile got colder. “So I’ve heard.”

Tan cocked his head. “I can imagine you’ve daydreamed about that quite a lot, haven’t you, hyung?”

Won’s smile vanished. The two brothers’ eyes locked, striking sparks. “Worry about our guests instead.” Tan said deceptively softly. “They’ll be arriving soon.”

Eyes never wavering, Won listed them off. “Lee Bo Na. Lee Hyo Shin. Jo Myung Soo. Have I forgotten anyone?”

Tan’s smile this time was positively malicious. “Just one. Jeon Hyun Joo I think her name is?”

Won flinched, jarring the table so that is bumped against Tan’s elbow. Tan’s knife slipped, cutting his finger. On his stream of swearwords Young Do silenced the mirror.

He sat back, rubbing his hand over his eyes. A man-eating wolf? He had a bad feeling he knew who the villagers and Tan were chasing.

Chan Young must have found the place where Eun Sang had been attacked and where he’d saved her. The blood and pawprints had created what must have seemed like a complete story.

Because after all, in what story did the wolf ever save the girl’s life?

He cast a look at the covers on his bed, which were moving gently in rhythm to Eun Sang’s breathing.

The kind in which the girl accidentally stole a part of the wolf’s soul, keeping him trapped for fifteen years, he thought. The kind in which the wolf’s only remedy was in the hands of two spoiled, warring brothers. The kind, he reminded himself grimly, in which the wolf had to rewrite the story to get home.

He just hoped he was a better writer than a baker.


	11. Chapter 11

For Eun Sang, the next few days slipped into an unlikely rhythm. Sleep and food at regular intervals, regular doses of a medicine that seemed to get more revolting the more she took it, and rounds and rounds of verbal sparring with her unlikely host.

She could never tell who won those rounds, or if, indeed, anyone actually did. They were usually about the most commonplace things, things so unimportant she could never tell how they started.

It reminded her, in an improbable way, of being with Chan Young. The easy flow of conversation, the deceptive ease that came from hours of time together, and the relaxation of silence when the words ran dry.

Except than she didn’t get that taut feeling in her chest when Chan Young laughed at something she said or smiled at her or…

She was learning to ignore that feeling in self-defense.

But mostly, as she healed, she was bored. She had never spent so much time without work. She felt useless, itchy to do something.

She would have happily taken over cooking duty, except that Choi Young Do seemed to still think she was on the verge of imminent collapse, and kept a firm stance on the do-nothing portion of her time.

Which left her only his bookshelf to entertain herself with.

Not many books had come Eun Sang’s way outside of the one-room school she’d attended, and she found herself wary of these. How could you trust something so slippery as words? Which left her…exactly where she’d begun. Bored.

Lying one day on the rug before the fire, she was staring into the flames.

Choi Young Do had been out, doing whatever it was that he did that resulted in food in his cupboards and wood on his fire, and when he came in, he brought the smell of snow and the outside world with him.

She looked up, all her naked longing for that outside world clear on her face. He paused, catching her expression, and if his face had been made for such emotions, she would have guessed he felt pity for her.

She turned away, unreasoningly upset at being pitied.

The long length of his legs appeared in her line of vision. “Bored?”

She snorted. “Brilliant deduction.”

He hummed slightly, drumming his fingers against the floor. “You could read.”

She remained silent.

“I have a wide selection of works.” He waved his arm at his bookshelf. “Poetry, adventure, history. Anything you’d like. Anywhere you’d want to be.”

She buried herself deeper in her blankets. “I don’t want to.” She said stubbornly.

There was a pause. “Poor caged little bird.” He said gently. “You don’t take well to capture, do you?”

“Would you?” She snapped back.

Another pause. “No.”

The sound of the one short syllable was so strange she rolled over and sat up so she could see his face. It was abstracted, a thousand miles away.

And Eun Sang found herself wondering if Choi Young Do was suffering his own kind of imprisonment. If he was, he had made himself a comfortable prison, but…

“What would be something good to read?” She was startled at the sound of her own voice. She hadn’t intended to ask. But the words felt right.

His attention snapped back to her. For a moment, he looked lost, but then the recognition came back into his eyes. He turned to the bookshelf, and began running a finger along the spines of the books. “You might like this one.” He presented a thick book bound in dark green and gold to her.

She took it hesitantly, the texture strange to her fingerprints. There was so much inside books, and they weighed so heavily.

Before she could think better of it, she thrust it back at him. “Read it to me?”

Thoroughly startled, he took the book. For a long moment, they looked at each other. And then, realizing what it was she was asking of him, he opened it.

He looked at the first page, tasting the words of the first paragraph. It was a heavy silence, and Eun Sang wondered, with a hint of panic, if perhaps she’d asked too much, opened a door she wanted to remain firmly closed…and then he started.

“Once upon a time,” and his voice was mellifluous, soothing, all the good things she’d ever loved wrapped in a blanket around her shoulders. “Once upon a time, there was a young girl. She didn’t know it, but she was very special, because this young girl had the heart of a wolf, in a time when wolves were rare and the world desperately needed them…”

Eun Sang leaned back, closed her eyes, and let the words carry her away.

//

She was sitting by the fire the next morning, still distracted by the magic she had discovered the previous day.

Choi Young Do presented her with a bowl, his trademark grin lurking. He had been very self-satisfied with her pleasure at the book he’d chosen.

She looked at it. “Porridge again?”

He folded his lanky self into a sitting position opposite her. “Always with the ingratitude.” He said sorrowfully.

She curled her fingers around the spoon. He nodded with encouragement.

“You’re like a puppy.” She scoffed, but began spooning the mess into her mouth.

“A puppy?” He sounded shocked.

She raised her eyebrows at him.

He raised his back. “I have never been called a puppy before.”

She swallowed a bite. “That would be because you probably never talk to people. How long have you been living out here anyway?”

“A while.”

“So mysterious. Do you ever give straight answers?”

“Do you ever stop asking questions?”

She tilted her spoon threateningly at him, one eye closed. “Ya, don’t test me. I’m known as a crack shot.”

He held up his hands. “I tremble in fear.”

“You should.”

His lips curved in his trademark smirk again, and he leaned forwards. “What could you possibly do to me, Cha Eun Sang?”

His breath slid along her cheekbone, a caress in invisibility. Her heart picked up in response.

It was more irritation at her own reaction than his smugness that made her do what she did. Mostly.

She let the spoon’s cargo fly, straight and true.

Choi Young Do pulled back, face undecipherable beneath the porridge that had splatted against his cheek and begun running in a soupy mess down into his collar.

They stared at each other for a moment. She bit her lip. That had been childish, and she knew it. An apology was already forming on her lips, when he reached over, dunked his finger very deliberately in her porridge, and then, with the care of an artist, raised it and drew a long line across her cheekbone. He tilted his head and squinted, and then nodded, pleased with his masterpiece.

And that was that.

He got porridge behind his ears, she gained a splodge on her nose, he got some down the back of his neck, she got it lodged in her eyelashes.

He was creating a small ball out of what remained in a threatening manner when she made her break for safety, shedding her blanket in a dash for the distance provided by the kitchen table.

He was in hot pursuit, but her legs were steady enough by now to grant her the protection of the far edge.

He pushed one way, she fled the other. Hands braced on the edges of its surfaces, they eyed each other speculatively, panting slightly. Cha Eun Sang had to bite back the giggles that kept threatening to escape her teeth.

“You can’t run away forever.” He reminded her, wielding his porridge ball menacingly.

“I’m the fastest girl in the province. Just watch me.”

He moved slightly, and she moved in response.

He pursed his lips, and then grinned again.

With a smooth motion, so fast she could barely register it, he leaped across the table, bracing his hand against it and then landing easily on his feet. “And I’m the biggest. Baddest. Wolf.” He punctuated each word with a step forwards.

Mouth open, she backed up until she bumped into the wall. He followed her all the way, his porridge still in his hand.

“That was cheating.” She gasped.

He loomed over, smug grin still in place. He braced one arm above her head, and tilted his head downward. “Didn’t you know? Wolves don’t play by any rules.” His body was in perfect line with hers, almost touching but never quite.

He was doing it again, she realized with shock, feeling the heat surging outwards from him, encompassing her own cold. She’d let her guard down over the past few days, burying that one evening beneath a blanket of silence.

His eyes were seeking hers, and she couldn’t resist the urge to meet them, to experiment, to see if it could possibly be as powerful as she remembered.

It was worse. If that one night had been a bonfire, this was a conflagration the size of a house. He was breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling in tune to her own. She could smell him—some strong fragrance she couldn’t place, snaking into her until even her breath belonged to him. He filled her vision, her head, her lungs. Where did she leave off and he begin? It felt like she was falling standing in place, spinning in a kaleidoscope of colors, drowning in air.

“Stop it.” She whispered, drunk on the sensation.

“Stop what?” He whispered back, head drooping closer to hers.

“Whatever you’re doing.”

“I thought it was you.” His mouth was by her cheek now.

She shivered. “It’s definitely you.”

“Hmm.” Shockingly his mouth had found some porridge stuck her face. He gently nibbled it away. Her breath caught.

“You’re a bit of a mess.” He whispered against her skin, his lips tracing a smear down to the corner of her mouth. She had her palms braced flat against the wall, unable to believe it, unable to resist it.

His lips reached the corner of her mouth. Eun Sang couldn’t breathe anymore. She couldn’t think. She had lost all sense of place, time, even of self. Whatever was happening was something beyond her, her best intentions, thought.

There was a moment of hesitation. She could feel him, mouth hovering just above hers. She bit her lip again, she heard his breath catch…

There was the sudden jingle of a horse’s bit outside the cave. They both froze.

“Kim Tan!” A masculine voice shouted out. “Ya, Tan! I found the wolf’s pawprints!”


	12. Chapter 12

Choi Young Do had gone immobile, his face frozen inches from hers.

Eun Sang looked up at him, unable to breathe. His eyes were so intense, pleading so burningly for her to stay still.

Outside there were more noises—the shuffle of boots against snow, the irritated snort of a tired horse, the rumble of conversation.

“Wolf prints, aish, and those of a human, too.” It was Kim Tan’s voice, certainly, just as she remembered. That apathetic lazy tone that had so confused her. Cha Eun Sang didn’t know how to take life casually. She didn’t understand how anyone could.

Choi Young Do wasn’t like that. He was unpredictable and sharp in strange places, unexpectedly kind and oddly mysterious. He was passionate and distant…he was a hundred things, but he was never detached.

“They lead both to and away from here. Is the den nearby?”

He was like…

“Could these be the prints of the girl? Could she still be alive?”

He was almost like…

“No, it’s impossible! There would be blood, wouldn’t there? Wolves leave a mess.”

And with that—that one word, that one trigger for all the things she’d seen in her poison-induced haze nights ago, of rough fur against her face that turned to gentle hands–all the pieces fell into place. Her mysterious host, his riddles, his exile. Even the stories of the haunted forest. She gasped as the realization swung into the pit of her stomach, the understanding that she’d stumbled into a fairy tale.

Young Do made a pleading motion, cupping his hand around the curve of her mouth, but it was too late.

Movement ceased outside. “Did you hear that?”

She breathed heavily, hoping he could see the apology in her eyes. She just hadn’t been able to hold in the first wave of shock as her world tilted, and then righted.

He sighed softly, lowering his head gently until their foreheads touched. She could feel an odd surge of regret washing off of him. She fluttered her eyelids silently—a question, a request for confirmation.

“There’s a cave here. Ya, Kim Tan, you check it out.”

“What? Why me?”

“My good looks are too precious to waste on a wolf.”

“Such a clever little Cha Eun Sang.” Young Do breathed into her ear. Her heart tightened, shocked, terrified, and…relieved. Young Do had risked his secret on her, taken a gamble to save her life. She was still suspicious. He was a liar. But he wasn’t a madman.

He was a wolf.

“Myung Soo—“ Kim Tan’s drawl was a complaint.

Eun Sang closed her eyes as Young Do ran his thumb over her lips, his body still braced so close to her own.

“You’re a lord. Noblesse oblige.”

“Aish.” There was a thump of shoes hitting the ground, as if Kim Tan had swung himself off a horse. “You only ever talk nonsense.”

“Not true! My nonsense is the most sense you probably hear all day.”

“When I understand that, I’ll comment on it.” There was the crunch of approaching footsteps.

Eun Sang was surprised to find her hands were clenched in Young Do’s shirt, the cloth so thin she could feel his skin like a finer fabric beneath it. Like silk, perhaps, if silk had ever been so smooth.

His hand had moved to her face, tilting it up slightly. The warmth of his breath had her parting her lips slightly, wanting…

“Look for me.” The words were an exhale against her mouth. “Oh, Eun Sang, look for me.”

And then he was gone, so abruptly she was left reeling against the wall, the cold of the world without him rushing in on her all at once.

The cave was bright after the warm darkness of her eyelids, and dazzled—by so many things—she had to blink to understand what was taking place.

Where her…where Young Do had been standing was a wolf, the change between the two so seamless and swift she hadn’t caught it. He was massive, a mountain of fur, all russet brown and fiery yellow where his eyes caught.

She gasped again, unable to help it. He was…beautiful. Nature’s own poem.

He looked briefly over his shoulder, enough for her to get equal glimpses of the wolf-smirk that didn’t seem to have changed in the slightest and the grim reassurance in his eyes, before he seemed to brace himself. With a powerful push of his muscles, he bounded through the curtain, hurting her eyes further with the brief dazzle of winter daylight.

She started after him automatically, unable to believe he was doing what he was doing, and the shouting that followed his appearance added wings to her heels.

Through a crack between curtain and rock wall, she could see them. Kim Tan, and an impish young man she assumed to be Myung Soo, had their swords drawn against the snarl of Young Do.

“My God, he’s a monster!” Tan’s hand was a white-knuckled grip.

Myung Soo whistled, one long low appreciative sound. “He’s a beautiful.” He said with a certain amount of admiration. “I’ve never seen a wolf so large.”

The wolf in question had his back to the forest, drawing Tan and Myung Soo to right angles from the hideaway. Young Do was backing away from them, teeth bared in an obvious threat, drawing them away from both his home and the one person who knew his story, who knew a young man lived in the woods where only a wolf was known to prowl.

“Oh, Young Do.” She whispered, pity welling through her. She realized now, suddenly, how he lived his life. So afraid, always living on the edge of a discovery that would mark him as a monster and make his life a hunted nightmare.

If he heard her, he made no sign. Instead he whirled suddenly on his paws and darted off into the trees in a flurry of snow.

“After him!” Both Tan and Myung Soo swung rapidly onto the backs of their horses and urged them in pursuit, disappearing after him.

Leaving Eun Sang alone.

She wrapped her arms around herself. Young Do was gone, and the logical corner of her brain told her with absolute certainty, he was gone for good. He wouldn’t come back to this cave now that hunters knew where he lay his head. It would be too great a risk. And why else would he have begged her to look for him?

Which left her…

With a thousand questions.

And only one way of answering them.

Grimly, Eun Sang began to wrestle the clothes she’d worn so many days ago off the hooks set into the wall, just the slightest bit too high for her comfort. “Oh, I’m going to look for you, Young Do.” She promised the wall. “And then you’re going to tell me exactly what’s going on.”


	13. Chapter 13

“Chan Young! Psst!”

 

Chan Young resolutely ignored her, dark head bent at a contemplative angle over his borrowed book.

“Chan Young!” She poked his back.

He twitched, and then move edged sideways on the bench, away from her.

Eun Sang narrowed her eyes at him.

It had been two days since her return from the forest, stumbling in a haze of weariness into her house to fall into her mother’s arms. In that time, through the barrage of questions people had asked, she had kept the truth of her absence silent. She simply said she had been shot by an arrow and collapsed, to wake nearly week later in the middle of the forest, miraculously alive. Had someone helped her? She had to assume so, but the kind stranger had clearly wanted no thanks. Could she truly remember nothing else? No. She must have been sick and unconscious the entire time.

The neighbors had eventually left, scratching their heads and muttering about the strangeness of the forest. Her mother had just hugged her, fed her copious amounts of soup, and clucked whenever she’d tried to leave the house.

Chan Young, however, had not been so easily appeased. He had seen the blood-stained and trampled snow where she’d fallen. He knew something had happened beyond her straightforward, easy to stick to story, known it because he saw it in her face. He had been terrified for her, and all she gave him was evasion?

He was an easy-going person, but there were certain lines he demanded respect for. She had broken their unspoken code of friendship—truth and inter-reliance—and he wasn’t prepared to forgive her for it easily.

Eun Sang understood that, in a frustrated sort of way. She’d respond the same way given the reversed circumstances. But she teetered on the edge of telling him and fixing this, halted by the image of Choi Young Do’s wolf eyes and the lengths he was clearly willing to go to to defend his secrets.

For the first time, Eun Sang found her loyalties torn. It surprised and dismayed her, how easily Young Do had gotten so deeply beneath her skin, to the point where her years-long love for Chan Young had to be weighed against a mere week of…well, fire and ice was as appropriate a term for it as anything else, she supposed.

So she was left, resorting to child’s tricks to try and draw Chan Young’s attention back to her. Because she needed him for the next phase of her plan.

Oh yes. She had a plan.

She’d found him this morning out on the square in town, sitting on one of the benches set up for an address by the mayor, accompanying his father. He’d seen her approaching down the main street, and buried his nose so deeply into his book Eun Sang thought he might have gotten some ink on it. But she hadn’t been deterred. They needed to talk.

Unfortunately, the mayor seemed to think so as well, beginning his address just as she reached her friend. She was forced to sit behind him and try to get his attention through strategic nudges.

The speech was boring, about crop rotations, but it kept Chan Young’s father deeply interested and oblivious to the war going on to his right, which was fortunate.

“And now to the discussion of beans—“ the mayor droned on.

Eun Sang sighed, watching her breath cloud in front of her. What would get Chan Young’s interest?

There was a thud of hoofbeats. Eun Sang glanced sideways to the road, and then paused, arrested. Down the street a contingent of riders were coming…riders in silk and brocade, if Eun Sang’s eye didn’t betray her.

Surprised, she automatically glanced to Chan Young, and was warmed to find that his own surprise and interest had overridden his anger, and that he had glanced at her as well. His eyes instantly shuttered when he realized what he’d done, and he looked away, but it was enough.

She turned her attention back to the visitors. They streamed past in a flood of bright color and brighter laughter, like beings from another, enchanted world.

Eun Sang recognized two of them—Kim Tan (she ducked her head, hoping he wouldn’t see her) and Myung Soo, but there were also a few men she didn’t recognize, a young woman in sober clothing that made her stick out like a sore thumb, and another woman, dressed prettily and with her head turned flirtatiously to talk to Tan…

Until her head turned and her eyes locked with Chan Young’s. Eun Sang could hear her hiss of breath as she saw the sparks fly even in the chilly winter air. Disbelievingly she turned to stare at Chan Young.

Her usually cool and composed friend had his jaw hanging open, his book lying forgotten on his lap. He craned his neck to follow the riders as they passed, the mysterious young woman keeping her gaze fixed on his as well until they were well out of sight.

“Oh no.” Eun Sang rolled her eyes. “Yoon Chan Young, you must be crazy.”

“What?” He said back, dazed to a point of forgetfulness.

The mayor harrumphed in irritation from his tree stump. “If you’re all done gawping, can we get back to serious business?”

Eun Sang grabbed Chan Young’s wrist. “Excuse us, ahjusshi?” She politely asked his father. He nodded, smiling, his attention already half on the mayor. He’d always had a soft spot for Eun Sang anyway.

Hanging tightly on to her friend, Eun Sang dragged him and his forgotten book away from the mass of people. Looking both ways, she dragged him between two buildings on the main street.

“Chan Young? Chan Young!” She snapped her fingers in front of his face. He blinked, and some awareness came back into his eyes.

“You don’t need to do that.” He said, annoyed. He shifted his book into the crook of his elbow and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m fine. And I’m not talking to you anyway.” He turned to go.

“Wait, Chan Young. Wait.” He hesitated, looking back at her over his shoulder. She could tell he was equal parts angry and hopeful.

She sighed, and closed her eyes. “Can’t you just trust me?” She asked in a small voice.

When she opened her eyes, it was to be on the receiving end of an intensely disbelieving stare.

In two strides he was in front of her again, all his betrayal shining in his face. “Can’t I just trust you? You nearly died to save me. I never do anything but trust you, Eun Sang. That’s not the right question. What I want, is for you to trust me. Trust me enough not to leap without looking, next time. Trust me enough to know I’d rather run any risk than have you sacrifice yourself for me. Trust me enough to know I would never, ever betray you. You’re my best friend.” His voice broke. “And I thought you had died for me. I didn’t think I was going to be able to live with myself.”

“Chan Young.” Eun Sang felt as if someone had stabbed her. “I didn’t think of it like that. I just wanted—“

“I know what you wanted.” His voice gentled, and he freed a hand to take hers. “It’s what you always want. To take care of everybody, to carry all the responsibility of the world on your shoulders. But you need to know I can help, too. I’m not just your damsel in distress.”

She gulped back a sob, and punched him playfully on the shoulder. “Ya, you’re too stubborn to be my damsel in distress.”

A small smile broke out across his face, the rainbow after the storm. “And you’re too mean to be my knight in shining armor. So we’d better stick to being friends.”

“I like that.” He opened his arms, and she went easily into them, as she always could at the last.

“Sorry.” She whispered into his shoulder.

“It’s fine.” He said, his chin resting comfortably on her head. “It’s always fine, in the end.”

They stood for a moment, just enjoying the returned equilibrium to their world.

“So that girl.” She broke the silence, teasing. “She’s pretty.”

He broke away, a blush rising up to his cheeks. “Ya, after we make up, you’re like this immediately?”

She just grinned. “It’s even worse than that. I have a favor to ask.”

“Of course you do.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “But first you meet my condition. What happened in the forest?” His gaze was direct and determined. There was no wiggling out of this.

Eun Sang sighed, giving up her internal war at last. She needed his help, anyway, and if Young Do could trust anyone to protect him, it would be her oldest and best friend. “I can do better than that. I can show you.”


	14. Chapter 14

Lee Bo Na stood by the window, staring wistfully out at the grounds.

Lee Hyo Shin lounged over to stand by her, scuffing his shoes carelessly against the rich carpet of the drawing room. “Waiting for Kim Tan?” He teased, one eyebrow quirked in mild amusement.

Bo Na started. “What? No, of course not. Why would you say that?”

He tilted his head. “Because you always are?”

“You only talk nonsense, sunbae.” She turned her face away. He waited a minute, casually tapping his toe against the floor. Give it a moment, he thought, and…

“He’s so pretty!” She burst out.

Hyo Shin bit his lip. “Tan?” He couldn’t ever really say it had occurred to him to call Tan pretty, but tastes differed.

She flapped her hand as if at a bug. “Of course not Tan.” She huffed with irritation, looking at him as if he were insane.

“Then who? Myung Soo?” Hyo Shin grinned. That wasn’t much better, in his honest opinion. “Me?” He tilted a finger at himself, quizzical.

“Pft. No. That boy. In the square.” Her eyes turned dreamy, lit from within by some secret warm memory. Hyo Shin caught himself envying that, and squashed it.

“Which boy?”

“Which boy? How could you not have noticed? He had the sweetest smile, and the gentlest eyes, and…and…”

“And you say I only talk nonsense. Was this some peasant we passed by when we were riding?”

“He wasn’t some peasant!” Bo Na drew herself up to her not very impressive height. “He was…he was…”

“What are we talking about?” In his usual disconcerting fashion, Myung Soo popped out from behind the door. “Is it me?”

“Bo Na’s in love with a peasant.” Hyo Shin explained, leaning thoughtfully against the window seat.

“Not me.” Myung Soo pouted.

Bo Na planted her hands on her hips. “He’s not a peasant, I tell you.”

Myung Soo scratched his head. “I trust sunbae on this one.”

Bo Na hmphed, and spun her back to them. “You two have no empathy.” She told them over her shoulder. “I’m going to find that boy. And invite him to the masquerade. What do you think of that?”

//

Yoon Chan Young’s hands were warm on her waist as Eun Sang guided the old grey mare through the snowdrifts. Just a few days ago she’d stumbled through them on her feet. It was much easier, she reflected, when you didn’t have to do the walking yourself.

Chan Young was silent, his attention focused on the world around them. Every so often she’d hear his breath catch as a shadow stirred, only to be released when it settled back into stillness as the wind died.

She gave his hand a comforting squeeze after he gave one particularly bad start. He squeezed back, and then withdrew his hand. “Are you sure this is safe?” His breath rustled the loose hair around her face.

“No.” She admitted.

“Aish.”

“You’re the one who wanted to know what happened.” She reminded him.

“You could have just told me.”

“I don’t know if you’d believe me.” She said slowly. “I’m not always sure I believe it myself.”

His breath was even for a few minutes. She could hear him turning it over in his head. “Eun Sang…”

“Sh.” She cut him off, pulling the mare to a halt. “We’re here.”

They had broken through tree line into the small clearing that surrounded the cave entrance. Eun Sang was surprised to find her heart beating quickly in her chest at sight of the familiar outline of the cave entrance. She placed her palm flat across it, checking it. Its thud was strong, steady, eager. As if she were coming home.

Chan Young, not noticing, swung off the horse, landing ankle deep in last night’s fresh snowfall. He propped his hands on his hips. “Here?” He asked warily.

“Here.” She confirmed, sliding after him, bunching her awkward skirts around her ankles. He caught her around the waist as she fell, setting her gently on her feet beside him. “This is where I was taken.” The hush was almost eerie, nothing moving in the world around them.

“By this mysterious helper of yours?” Chan Young took the horse’s reins and started to lead her forward, but she jerked her head against his pull, pulling back uneasily. “What’s wrong with Grandmother?” Chan Young stared at his placid horse’s unusual reaction. “Come on, old woman.” He patted her neck with affection, but while she nuzzled his hair in acknowledgment she refused to take another step.

“Leave her.” Eun Sang said, her heart rising in sudden hope. “I think I know—“ Too eager to even finish her own thought, she gathered her skirt and ploughed forwards to the cave, a name already forming on her lips.

“Eun Sang!” Chan Young cried behind her. She heard him swear, and then abandon his horse, following after her. But she couldn’t wait for him.

It was against all her logic and expectation, but if he were here, if he had come back…

“Choi Young Do!” The words were all excitement, all hope, as she swept into the entrance.

But they fell into the emptiness of disuse, an emptiness that surged out to meet her as she stood suddenly forlorn at the entrance.

It wasn’t just disuse either, she noted with shock. She would never have known anyone lived here. It was all gone. Everything.

She stumbled in, taking it in. The curtain, the bed, the carpet, the mirror, the table and candles…all gone. What was more, the place was layered with a thick coating of leaf mould, dust and spiderwebs. As if no one had ever lived there at all.

“Eun Sang?” Chan Young’s voice behind her was gently questioning.

Slightly numb, she placed her hand where the bookshelf had been. Would she ever know how all those stories ended now?

“It was here.” She said, disbelieving. “Chan Young…it was like a house. This is where the bed was…and the fireplace. There was a table and a mirror, and…and…”

Chan Young gently took her hand, rubbing his thumb in comforting circles across the back. “Are you sure you didn’t dream it?”

She stared back at him, still overwhelmed. “I couldn’t have hallucinated it. There was too much. It all felt so real.”

“You were very sick.” He said doubtfully.

She wanted to shout no, to throw his hand away, and insist that no one could dream up Choi Young Do and the way he had made her feel.

But she had no proof. And Chan Young never went by sheer gut instinct. He was logical. He believed what he could see, what he could touch.

She curled her free hand into a ball in her skirt. “Maybe.” She looked away, back around the cave. She could feel her shoulders sagging. She had wanted, she realized now, the odd comfort and reassurance of this little nest, even if her…if the wolf hadn’t been there. She had wanted to touch things he had touched, reassure herself he was still alive and well. She didn’t know why she should want those things so fiercely. But she did.

And now instead she was confronted with the idea that perhaps none of it had been real at all. She wanted to cry.

Instead, she turned to go. “I’m sorry to bring you out here for nothing. We’d better get home before the sun sets.”

//

They managed to get home before the light faded. Chan Young dismounted and helped her off the horse in front of her house. His expression seemed to ask “now what?”

She considered the doorway into her house. It would be warm inside, and her mother would be waiting.

But it wouldn’t be the right kind of warmth.

She walked past the door to the edge of the trees, to a boulder perched beneath what in spring would be a tree full of cherry blossoms. She sat on the rock, tucking herself into a thoughtful curl. Chan Young stationed himself dutifully by it. “Bastard.” She said to no one in particular.

She hadn’t imagined him. She knew that much. Choi Young Do had been more alive than most people she’d ever met.

She could understand why he’d want to make his cave look abandoned. In fact, she found it reassuring. It meant he was still alive.

But where to start looking for a wayward wolf?

She drummed her fingers against the rock, unwilling to face the answer staring her in the face.

“Chan Young…” she said reluctantly.

“What?” He leaned against the tree, hands in his pockets.

“I think maybe—“

That was when her mother bustled out of the house, bringing with her a gust of delicious smells. Her face was warm, her eyes dancing.

She was so cheerful it startled Eun Sang. “Mother?”

What are you doing out here? Have you heard the news? Lord Kim and his friend have caught a monster!

“The monster?” Eun Sang felt the earth shiver beneath her feet. “What monster?”

A giant wolf—the largest anyone’s ever seen. They cornered it this morning. Apparently they’ve been chasing it for two days. It put up quite a fight. They say it nearly tore a man’s head off. They’ve taken it alive to show the town, before killing it.

“The bastard.” Eun Sang said again, after a moment of stunned silence. “That bastard wolf.”


	15. Chapter 15

It was a shocking revelation. Young Do, the riddle, the tease, the wolf…caught. Locked up.

Was it even possible?

Eun Sang hadn’t entirely been able to believe it. She still wasn’t. Which was why, if she was honest with herself, she was the entry to the Kim’s manor once again, basket in hand and Chan Young at her side.

She had to…see him. Talk to him. Something. She had to know. Could she help? Should she? He was both a wolf and a man. He was dangerous. But he had helped her.

She didn’t know him! He might be a murderer. He might have blood on his teeth. He might be any one of a hundred things, and she couldn’t sort out her feelings of curiosity and longing and fear, gratitude and uncertainty and wistfulness for what now seemed like an incredibly simple week.

Her mind was constantly going in a thousand directions. She couldn’t focus.

The only way she was going to fix this was to try at least to talk to him. Chan Young didn’t understand why she had suddenly decided on this visit, this waste of resources and energy, but he knew something was driving her. And he was letting her lead, stepping back to let her get the frenetic energy out of her system.

She could have hugged him if she hadn’t been so distracted, so jittery.

She had found out they were holding the monster—Young Do—in old dungeon cells beneath the manor, planning to parade him through the village the night of a grand masquerade the lords were planning.

And then kill him.

Her mind shied away from that.

A servant—the same gatekeeper as the last one, from both a million years and two weeks ago—opened the gate.

She held up her basket, remembering how it had worked so easily for Young Do. “Paying my respects.” She said, dry-mouthed now that she was actually here.

The gatekeeper didn’t seem to think anything strange of it, not recognizing her, and let them both in. The courtyard was marginally calmer than it had been the last time she was here, she noted, but still busy, still full of people.

Chan Young put a steadying hand on her shoulder and she gave him a grateful look. Deceit was not her best gift, and she wasn’t sure how she was going to convince Kim Tan to let her see her…the wolf, without giving it all away. Because if he found out exactly what he had in his dungeons, then Young Do wouldn’t even have a few days of life left. His time would be up, gone in the breath of her words.

That responsibility of secret-keeper weighed like a stone on her chest. “May I see the young lord now?” She enquired, voice steady.

The servant gave her an odd look, and Eun Sang remembered belatedly that the knowledge of Lady Kim’s death was being suppressed, rarely mentioned even by those who had already paid their respects, catching the atmosphere of discomfort around the subject. It was better to play safe and please your lords when they held your life in the palm of your hand.

She looked back at him, pretending confidence.

It must have been convincing, because the servant shrugged and gestured forwards. “Follow me.”

She began to follow him, Chan Young at her heels, when the servant turned and frowned. “One at a time.” He said sternly.

Chan Young backed up, holding up his palms. “I’ll wait here.”

Eun Sang nodded, hoping she still looked confident. He shooed her forwards, reassurance in his smile, and she turned away, her script thrumming in her head.

My lord, I’ve come to request a boon.

What is that, Cha Eun Sang?

I have heard of the wolf in your dungeon. I was hoping—no that wasn’t right. I request to be allowed to look upon its face.

Why?

When I was sick, I had nightmares. I remember seeing a wolf…I wish to look upon this creature. Perhaps he was somehow related to where I was kept, or to the person who helped me. Perhaps seeing it will trigger memories…

It was weak, but it was the best she could do.

She just had time to take a deep breath as the servant pushed open the doors…not to the ante room. Into a drawing room, richly, uncomfortably, decorated.

Tan and another man she didn’t know were facing down, glares like daggers.

“My lords.” The servant said respectfully. “A villager.”

Neither seemed willing to break their stare-off for her, too wrapped up in their own private battle of wills.

Eun Sang sighed, rolling her eyes, her discomfort suddenly evaporating. Someone’s life could be on the line, and yet there would always be others so self-centered their private wars outclassed everything else. Eun Sang didn’t have time for that. Neither did Choi Young Do. She coughed loudly.

Kim Tan blinked and looked away, as if made aware of her presence for the first time.

“My lord.” She said smoothly, moving gracefully forwards, sure of herself now. “My name is—“

“Cha Eun Sang. Of course.”

Thrown off, Eun Sang paused. “You remember me?”

“Certainly. What is more, I helped in the search for you. You didn’t know? You haven’t come to thank me?” With a wave of his hand, he dismissed the other man. Eun Sang watched in fascination as the other man looked as if he was being forced to swallow a bitter liquid, and then turned on his heel and stalked out of the room.

“No, I have. But—“ She heard a door slam from a distance.

Kim Tan turned as if to follow her line of sight. “Ah.” He smiled, an acrimonious twist. “That was my brother, Kim Won. Pleasant, isn’t he?”

“Very.” Eun Sang remembered her basket abruptly, and thrust it out at him. “Thanks, from my mother and myself, for your diligent search.”

He smiled again, more genuinely this time, and accepted. “My pleasure. We were all relieved to hear you had suffered no real injury. Except that you recall nothing from your sickness?” He lifted an eyebrow, and Eun Sang had to suppress a quick pang. Young Do and his ever sarcastic eyebrows were one of the many things she was surprising herself by missing.

“No…I mean, yes. I don’t remember anything. My lord, I’ve come—“

“To see the monster?”

Completely thrown, Eun Sang fumbled. “Yes. That is…how did you…”

“People have been coming all week to see him. He’s quite an attraction. A beauty, too, I promise.”

He was already moving to a door, shrugging on a heavy jacket laying across a chair. “The dungeons are cold.” He said conversationally. “Will you be warm enough?”

Eun Sang held up the edge of her cloak, speechless.

Kim Tan nodded. “Follow me.”

//

The dungeons were as cold as promised. Eun Sang had to keep her hands wrapped in her cloak to fend off the chill.

What was worse than the cold was the darkness and smell—of a rot buried so deep beneath the surface there was no escaping it. She marveled that anyone survived time here without going mad. It was as if the whole outside world ceased to exist.

Kim Tan stopped at last at the final cell of the corridor. “Here he is.” He said with the careless ease of a proud owner. “Careful.” He warned, barring her way with an arm when she would have approached closer. “He’s vicious. Nearly tore my throat out.”

I don’t blame him. She thoughtvindictively, not caring if she was just or not. All her sympathies were on the side of caged creatures. But her voice was calm. “I understand.”

Carefully she slid past him, and crouched by the door of bars. Beyond it, in the shadows, she could see something shift and then the gleam of yellow.

“You don’t take well to capture, do you?” She breathed gently, quoting his words to him..

There was a rustle down the hall and the sudden appearance of a servant. “My lord.” He said nervously. “There’s been a problem…in the kitchen…some farm boy…”

Kim Tan straightened from hunching over her shoulder. “Alright, I’m coming. Cha Eun Sang?”

“A few moments more.” She said quickly. “I will follow you shortly.”

He shrugged. “Just take care. Remember. He’s a monster.” With that he and his servant made quick progress back the way they had come, leaving her in the small pool of light of the lantern she had carried.

There was that indefinable shift again, and before her lay an incredibly battered Choi Young Do. “Brilliant deduction.” He quoted hoarsely.


	16. Chapter 16

Young Do winced, and pulled himself onto his knees.

He imagined he looked pretty bad—the Kim boys had taken a little too much joy in bringing the ‘monster’ down. His left eye felt swollen and his mouth tasted like blood. He took gentle stock of his ribs. One definitely felt broken. “Ouch.” He said mildly.

Cha Eun Sang, crouched in her small pool of light, looked like a fierce angel. The thought made him crack a smile…which in turn broke the scabbing mess that was his lip. “So what brings you here?” He said conversationally, trying to assess exactly how bad the rib was. It was always hard to tell exactly how damage sustained in wolf-form would carry over to his man-form. In this case, he’d been overconfident, thinking that it couldn’t possibly hurt worse. Turned out, it could.

His question seemed to stun her, and he gave her an amused glance from under his eyebrows. “Or did you come to rescue me? Ya, what a heroine.”

“What saving you? I came…I just came…”

He sighed, rolling his jaw. “To what? Spit it out, little Cha Eun Sang.”

Her hands balled into fists and she set her jaw. “Who are you? What are you?”

“And what good is that information going to do you?” He regarded her steadily. “Help you sleep better at night? Answer all your deep questions about the universe? What does it matter if I turn into a wolf or a kitten or like to sleep naked? I do, if you’re curious. Sleep naked.”

“That’s a lie. You don’t. We lived together for a week, remember.”

He grinned, pleased. “Does that mean you were checking?”

“It means I’m not blind.” She snapped back. “And I’m asking because it will actually help me sleep better at night.”

He cocked his head. “You came all this way for a sound night’s sleep? You must be sleeping very poorly indeed.”

She did actually have shadows beneath her eyes, visible even in the bad lighting of his prison. He wondered again if their tie ran both ways. He knew if she died, he died. If she hurt, he hurt. But what happened if he was suffering, in trouble? Did she feel twinges as well?

He tapped his chest, right above his heart. “Does your heart ache for your poor friend?” He knew he sounded bitter, but he couldn’t help it. All his carefully laid plans had fallen apart, all because if he hadn’t helped a dying girl in the snow, he would have died as well. All because of a curse he’d brought on himself, fifteen years ago.

All because of his father.

He shouldn’t be angry. But he was. He could no more help it, this fury against his twisted fate, than he could stop breathing. He’d buried it for so long—all the anger and duty and homesickness, the twisted sense of responsibility for this girl, this trap that had kept him locked away for so long, so far from where he was meant to be. The anger that it wasn’t self-preservation that had made him save Cha Eun Sang’s life in the forest, or even the idea that here was a tool for his plan.

It was that looking down on her whitening face, already whiter than the snow, he’d remembered the girl that morning who’d kicked him in the ankle, who’d called him a madman—who had courage and fire beneath her ice. It was that frail spark he’d wanted to save.

It had been the most selfless thing he’d ever done, when it should have been his most selfish.

He lunged forwards, unable to control it any longer, wrapping his bloody hands around the bars of his cell. “Did you come to gloat? Did you come to tell me what a fool I am? I have news for you, I already know—“

She moved so quickly he couldn’t tell what happened, except that her mouth on his tasted like ice—the kind that was so cold it burned you. The world seemed to stop, even the flickering of the lamp. Just the sound of their breathing and the beautiful creases of her closed eyelids. Stillness. Balance

Until he couldn’t take it anymore, his internal fire leaping up to meet her. Cupping her face with his hand, he pulled her closer, hungry for this sensation he’d been seeking without knowing. He probed against her mouth and she opened to him wordlessly, pressing herself against the bars to his cell, as famished for him as he was for her. He bit her lower lip, claiming her, and she bit him back right on his cut, making him growl with desire as the taste of his blood marked their kiss. One of her hands came forward to grip his tattered shirt, and it felt like his heart was flying beneath her palm.

It was fire and ice coming together to create a storm, equal parts desire and need, tearing away trappings of reality. It felt like it could swallow them whole. Tear down the manor. Envelope the world and rips its seams apart with its power.

It was heaven and it was hell and Young Do never wanted it to stop.

Until her foot knocked over the lantern as she moved closer, plunging them into sudden darkness. Startled, she pulled away, and at their breaking apart, reality settled back onto its proper footing.

There was only the sound of their ragged breathing.

“Who are you?” Her voice was a whisper in the dark.

He rested his head against the cold iron bars of his cell. “I wish you’d ask a different question.”

“No. Who are you?”

“Stop asking.”

“Who are you?” Her voice was rising, fear and anger lifting through each syllable.

“I told you not to ask questions which have answers you won’t like.”

“Who are you?”

“Prince Choi Young Do. Of the werewolf clan between the kingdoms of Seelie and Unseelie.” He could nearly hear the facts striking the bare floor, rattling like bones. It felt like his hands burned where the iron dug into them. “Exile. Prisoner. Vengeance-seeker. Magician. Murderer. Unwilling guardian of your soul.” He looked up, seeking her vague outline. “But you didn’t ask the right question.”

Her voice shook. “What’s the right question?”

“Who are you?”


	17. Chapter 17

Eun Sang felt as if someone had dashed cold water over her. Her hands, pressed to the cold of the floor, were the only thing anchoring her in reality. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

In the dark, she could see no more than the hint of a shrug of the shoulders from Young Do. “I’ve been asking myself exactly that for fifteen years.”

She shook her head and, hands fumbling, tried to relight the lamp. She needed to see his face. It took three tries before the flint and tinder she’d found stored in a compartment of the base of the lamp caught. But with the return of the reassuring light, she found it difficult to lift her head back to his.

The taste of his mouth—of his blood—still lingered on her tongue.

“You have blood on your face.” His voice was quiet, observational.

Her hand flew to where he had touched her face, her eyes lifting automatically to his.

“You should clean that off before anyone sees it.” He looked calm, as if his frantic fight against her questions had worn him out, left him resigned and empty.

Hands still shaking, she scrubbed at it with a corner of her cloak. “You only ever talk in riddles.” She accused, working to keep her voice level.

He shrugged again. “What don’t you understand? I’ll explain what I can. If we have time. I’m surprised Tan hasn’t come back down to drag you off.”

Despite everything a smile fluttered across her face. “That would be Chan Young’s doing.” She said with some satisfaction.

“Who?” Young Do looked blank.

//

Chan Young backed up, and tripped on a bag of misplaced flour, landing flat on his back with an emphatic thud.

This was not what he’d had in mind when Eun Sang had asked him to buy her time alone with the monster. Pepper Kim Tan with some questions, sure. Drag him off to look at weaponry, why not?

But then the plan had changed and he’d had to provide a distraction that would pull Tan away by sheer word of mouth.

So what had he done? Gone to the kitchen. Toyed with the idea of shouting fire, or something. He’d figure it out as he went.

The problem that had arisen was that Chan Young was at heart the nicest of nice guys. Starting a riot, causing problems, being in general a nuisance, were all beyond his capabilities.

Fortunately (or not so fortunately, depending on how you thought of it), trouble had found him in the shape of one Lee Bo Na—the prettiest girl Chan Young had ever seen, who made his heart beat a thousand times faster just by the flutter of her eyelashes. Whose smile was the brightest he’d ever seen, even brighter than his best friend’s, something he hadn’t thought was possible.

And who happened to clearly be a Lady of the First Quality. She shouldn’t have been fluttering those eyelashes at him. She shouldn’t been stalking down the kitchen with a militant gleam in her eye that had him tripping backwards. She shouldn’t have been dismissing every servant in the kitchen with a wave of her hand leaving them alone together. With a roasting pig.

This couldn’t be good.

“M-my l-lady…” Chan Young started.

She licked her lips. “Call me Bo Na.” She purred.

Chan Young gulped. Flailed trying to get up.

Managed to kick a protruding log from the fire with just enough force roll it out of the fireplace and into a pile of rags.

Which was just enough to start a fire.

//

Young Do exhaled, amused. “You have a lot of knights looking out for you, don’t you?”

Eun Sang rolled her eyes. “Chan Young’s not my knight. He’s more like my damsel in distress.”

Young Do snorted. “I can see it.”

“You’re changing directions again. No more circles. No more riddles.” She held up an admonitory finger.

He licked his lips, his tongue chasing a stray droplet of blood around the edge of his mouth, and she could feel her cheeks flushing. She had to look away for a moment, so that when he started his story, her eyes were trained on the gray dirt of the floor, not his face. And once he’d started, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his gaze.

“You want a story, little Eun Sang? Alright. I’ll tell you an excellent one. A beautiful bed time tale, told in a dungeon, from one prisoner to another.

“Once upon a time—that’s how all stories should start, correct? I don’t want to fail the conventions—there were two brothers. Werewolves. Monsters, I think you might call them.” She inhaled sharply, but he continued as if he hadn’t heard. “One was a king and one was a prince. And the prince was, naturally, jealous of the king. Murderously jealous. Like all good villains he didn’t let a little thing like family ties get in his way, so he killed his older brother and took over the throne. Unfortunately for our new king, he had a son who was just not as bloodthirsty as he was. Don’t get me wrong, this new prince had his fair share of flaws—a hot temper, a disinterest in law, and a rebellious streak as long as winter. But murdering people he liked wasn’t one of them. And he wasn’t overly fond of his father….

//

Choi Young Do stood in the accustomed, respectful manner–legs braced, hands folded behind his back.

But his eyes, he knew, were hot with dislike.

In the marble throne room, there was only himself, and his father. If you didn’t count the thirty or so odd guardsmen posted around to make sure the new king didn’t meet the same fate as the old one. And Young Do was disinclined to. They hadn’t done such a good job the first time around.

“You called me. Father.” He tacked on, letting the pause between ‘me’ and ‘father’ be just long enough to make the last word mocking.

The king’s hands tightened on the arms of his throne. “You came. Son.”

So his father was in the mood to play games.

Young Do gave an eloquent shrug. “The king calls, the prince comes. Or have you forgotten that’s how it works?”

His father’s face paled, and Young Do smiled to himself. Direct hit.

The king stood. “I called you for a special reason.”

“You’re giving me goosebumps of anticipation.”

The king stepped of his dais, leisurely. Controlled. “You have quite a mouth on you.”

Young Do smiled cutely. “Aigoo, you think so? I like to think it’s inherited.”

His father paced forward, stopping only when he was right in front of Young Do. For a long moment they met each other’s eyes. And then, then with an abrupt snap, the king’s hand flew against Young Do’s face—a sharp sound in the stifled silence of the room. The guards didn’t move, eyes focused straight ahead.

Young Do raised his fingers to the new imprint. Just one of a thousand. “I think your aim is getting better.” He remarked.

The king shook his hand, as if he’d touched something dirty with it. “What kind of son are you? What am I supposed to do with you? You’re useless.”

Young Do said nothing, still probing his cheek. He wondered if there would ever come a time that his father’s words didn’t lash like fire.

Probably not.

“Here’s your chance to do something useful, you lazy bastard.”

“I live to serve.” The irony in his words were enough to sink a ship, but his father breezed past them.

He waved his hand, conjuring an image above his fingers.

Despite himself, Young Do found his curiosity piqued and stepped closer.

It was a pendant in the shape of a circle, and as it rotated he could see that one side an ivory moon was engraved, on the other a golden sun. It was a beautiful thing, valuable as a work of art besides its obvious worth in gold.

“What’s this?”

“A family heirloom of ours, lost for generations. Stolen by a human.”

Young Do was impressed. Stealing from the werewolves was something not even other fay did lightly. For a human to try it, and what’s more get away with it, was something special. “And they lived?”

“They did.” Grimly, the king closed his fingers around the image, making it disappear. Young Do felt as if it had taken away some of the light with it. “A slur to our honor.”

Young Do had a sinking sensation that he knew what was happening. And an odd sense of being impressed. The wily old wolf.

“I want you to find it, avenge our honor on the thief’s family, and return it to us.”

Young Do laughed and held up his fingers, ticking off the things expected of him. “You want me to go to the mortal world, spend perhaps centuries hunting down this trinket, kill people who are in no way connected to the original theft, and then, if I am lucky enough to survive all this, finally return home?”

His father looked at him with contempt. “You should be eager to avenge us, not waste breath making excuses. You think you can’t do it?”

Let’s see if you can keep me out of the way, father. He thought. Send me off on a wild goose chase. See if I won’t return and rip your throat out.

Young Do gave a feral smile and said aloud. “Not at all. Father. Just making sure it was enough of a challenge.”


	18. Chapter 18

Young Do twirled the necklace on one finger, feeling its welcome heft, and then caught it with a self-satisfied smile and looped it over his neck.

 

Three years he’d spent tracking it down, following rumors and stories, wandering from large cities to provincial towns, from country to country. He’d been hungry, and he’d been cold. He’d suffered the strangest of all experiences, that of having his age frozen as he walked in the human world. He’d known that would happen, but it was tangible proof that his world and this one moved so out of sync that laws of nature refused to recognize him.

Most of all, he had been alone.

He’d been in the capital trying to drink that loneliness back into its hole when he’d first heard the rumor. The one about the thieves.

The breathless drunks had hissed out a fairy tale, listing into each other with eager, spittle-slicked lips. It was just a story, the kind of thing children liked—a dynasty of legendary thieves who could do things no one else dreamed of. Young Do had heard a thousand such stories.

And yet…and yet, his instinct had told him to follow it.

So when they’d left the bar, he risen and followed them. It would take a legend to steal from his people, at least, he’d reasoned.

He’d had to bare his fangs and shed some blood in a few dark alleys before he’d found anything more solid, but he hadn’t minded that. He wore blood easily. And the astonishingly real facts behind the stories had been enough to convince him it was a lead worth tracking down.

But the lead had led him in a surprising direction – to the provincial home of a common-place middle-aged farmer with a wife and two daughters.

Young Do looked over his shoulder to where the man and his wife slept in their double bed. No one would ever guess this man had been dangerous. Or that he was just one of a long line of thieves to inherit a fay treasure beyond price.

Strange that he’d wound up here. What made someone give up his world?

Not that Young Do cared.

He shrugged, and then hesitated. His hand went the knife in his belt, and after a moment he pulled it out. In the fading firelight, shadows danced off its edge.

He’d found the pendant. Once he’d achieved vengeance, as ordered, he could go home and end his exile.

It was a thought that made his heart race and his eyes slide shut. Home.

He knew that people in this world shied away from him, aware that he was somehow wrong. Other.

Because he was. Everything about him echoed his home—the strange peaks, the aching depths. And he missed it, like a burn in his heart. To go home, to resume his life…it was all he wanted.

His hand tightened around the dagger.

He wasn’t a stranger to death, he reminded himself. He’d done some terrible things. What were four more lives in the balance? Wasn’t a werewolf’s life worth more than any human’s anyway? Show him a fay anywhere who would say differently, and he’d show you a liar.

But, the voice whispered in the back of his head, you’ve never harmed a child.

But home, the other voice whispered.

Young Do shifted his grip on the blade and walked to the cradle by the fireside.

One easy slash, and it the rest would come easy.

He crouched down over the sleeping tiny body, positioned the knife, took a deep breath and…

Never a child, the voice repeated.

He sat back on his heels, breathing hard. Why was this so difficult?

Taking a grip on himself, he sat forward, prepared to try again…

The little one—no more than three years old, surely—rolled over, blinking open sleepy brown eyes.

His breath caught, and his knife wavered.

“Oppa.” She chirped and sat up with a hefty dose of wobbles that made him, acting purely by instinct, drop his knife to steady her.

He looked at the fallen knife ruefully.“Aish.”

The child looked at him with curiosity, and then spying the pendant he’d draped around his neck, swatted at it playfully.

“Don’t do that.” He reprimanded, tucking it away under his shirt.

Her lower lip wobbled.

“Don’t do that either!” He said with increased alarm and pulled the pendant back out.

Happy again she grabbed it with both fists. He sighed.

The baby burbled at him. He poked her forehead and she fell back, letting go of his pendant and cuddling her pillow instead, already drifting back to sleep.

For a moment that felt like it would never end, he gazed down on the baby.

In the end, the decision came to him so easily it was as if he had never had to make one.

He stood smoothly, and made his way over to the window by which he’d entered the sleeping cottage. He gracefully slung himself over the sill one long leg at a time and out into the drowsy summer night, pausing only to look back for a moment.

“Thank you.” He said, surprising himself.

And then he shook himself, and with a heart too light for his own comfort, he disappeared into his wolf-self and the forest.

That was the last happy moment he was going to have for a while.

The next morning he was trapped by a river gorge, five assassins pointing poisoned arrows at him, a dead woman at his feet, and two screaming babies behind him.

//

Eun Sang held up her hands. “Wait. Wait. I need—“ She couldn’t even finish the sentence, she was breathing so hard. It felt like she had been running for years.

He paused expectantly, and then shook his head. “Ya, Cha Eun Sang. I expected better from you. I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet.”

She pointed at herself. “I was the baby?”

He nodded.

“My father was a…a thief?”

“A great thief.” Young Do corrected. “I think there may be fay in your blood somewhere.”

“That’s impossible—“

“Cha Eun Sang!” A voice called from the stairs.

She whirled, moving upwards so quickly she made herself dizzy.

Kim Tan came down the stairs at a jog, grasping a flour-covered boy by the neck. “Does this belong to you?”

She glanced behind her in worry, but Young Do had retreated back into both the shadows and his wolf-shape.

“No—“ She started and then stopped. “Chan Young?” She said with incredulity.

Her friend gave her an exhausted look.

//

Kim Tan watched with amusement as Eun Sang dusted off the worst of Chan Young’s mess.

“What happened to you?” She enquired, turning him closer to the window of the drawing room. “And what’s this in your hair?”

He ruffled an exploring hand through it, and then examined the residue on his palm. “Might be porridge?” He hazarded.

Kim Tan stifled a laugh, and Eun Sang gave him a hard look. He held up his hands.

“What did happen, Chan Young?” She asked again.

Chan Young looked warily at their host. Kim Tan looked back, interested.

At last her best friend sighed and shrugged his shoulders. “I accidentally set the kitchen on fire.”

She scrunched her nose at him. That was your idea of a distraction?

He wrinkled his back at her. It worked, didn’t it?

“You did more than that.” Tan interrupted their silent conversation. “You then saved my friend Bo Na from the flames.”

Eun Sang’s eyebrows soared. Chan Young’s mouth opened but no words came out.

Kim Tan continued to scrutinize them. “She’d like to invite you to the masquerade as repayment of her gratitude.”

Chan Young looked like he might pass out. Eun Sang had a sudden hunch that Bo Na was the girl he’d been staring at so besottedly in town as she rode past. This was so oddly backward she had to say something.

“My lord—“ She started.

“No buts.” He interrupted. “And what’s more, I’d like to invite you as well. So that your friend won’t get lonely.” His smirk was so condescending Eun Sang had to keep herself from automatically lashing out.

Instant denial was on her lips when an idea struck her.

“My lord…we would be happy to accept.”

Chan Young’s foot came down on hers like a ton of breaks. She kicked his ankle in response and continued smoothly. “I would also like to offer my mother’s and my services in preparing costumes for the ball.”

Tan’s eyes lightened, pleased. “We would be delighted. And we would pay generously, of course.”

She smiled. “But would it be alright to request a working space here, in the manor? The light is so much better than it would be in our cottage, and we would want this to be some of our best work.”

Tan drummed his fingers against the chair back he was leaning against. “I see no reason why not.”

Eun Sang curtseyed gratefully, her dark hair sweeping over her face as a curtain so that he couldn’t see her triumphant smile. “Thank you, my lord.”

You owe me the rest of the story, Choi Young Do. Don’t think I won’t collect.


	19. Chapter 19

Young Do sprawled out, counting his breaths. He had to take them lightly, gently, or else his side hurt too much. Almost worse than his mind.

He closed his eyes against the darkness.

He had always firmly believed he was a creature of darkness. He was a werewolf. He lived by the call of the moon, by the beckoning of shadows and the hidden places of night. It made up the greater part of his soul. It was his element.

He had also believed for fifteen years that he was a prisoner, trapped by circumstances and vindictiveness. He had nursed the bitterness of a prisoner, fed it with anger and homesickness, built for himself his own bars of isolation.

Young Do was learning that he had been wrong on both counts. He was no creature of darkness. He was more a creature of light than anyone or anything else, his life built around its presence. He had never been a prisoner before, every lock and chain he had thought binding himself his own creation.

You learned the difference between moonlight and darkness, between bitterness and iron bars, when faced with the solid realities of both.

He let out a puff of sigh, aggravated. Introspection was not his favorite occupation. Unfortunately, it was the only one left to him.

That, and reliving his kiss with Eun Sang.

But that was even worse. Thinking about it made his veins run cold, his mouth yearn for the taste of blood and ice. That way madness lay.

And so he lay in his fetid little prison, clothed in his wolf-form, living off of the scraps Kim Tan had so kindly ordered for his provision, trying very hard not to think at all.

Until today.

“Wake up!” A voice hissed.

Young Do fought a sincere desire to bite off this person’s hand, whoever they were, and kept his eyes obstinately closed.

There was a pause, and then, very cautiously. “Choi Young Do?”

His eyes flew open, and forgetting for a moment that inch of him hurt, he scrambled to his paws, staring into the dark beyond his cell.

“She’s crazy.” The voice grumbled, and then there was the snap and flash of tinder, and Young Do had to squint his eyes against the sudden light, even as he basked in it.

A young man squatted outside his cell…a familiar looking young man, serious and intent. Yoon Young Chan.

Young Do huffed and eased himself into a sitting position. What, exactly, had Eun Sang done?

There was the rattle and jangle of metal and then…and here Young Do couldn’t believe his eyes…the door swung open.

On the other side Chan Young was eyeing him grimly. “If she was wrong and you’re just a bloodthirsty wolf who kills me…I’m going to haunt her to death.”

Young Do reached for the other-self that existed within his bones and shifted back into humanity. Braced on his hands and knees, he lifted his aching head. “You would,” he said amused, “have to get through me.”

//

Eun Sang tilted the empty soju bottle and squinted down its narrow neck. A few drops remained and she swished them thoughtfully.

In front of her, the two guardsmen of the dungeons were slumped, completely passed out. One gave a satisfied snore, and Eun Sang had to repress a giggle. The valerian she and Chan Young had added to the alcohol had worked like a charm.

It had taken her all of three steps outside of the Kim manor to decide to tell Chan Young everything. If she was honest with herself, it hadn’t even taken that long—her mind had been made up the moment she had kissed Young Do.

Her feelings about the werewolf might be as tangled and angry as his own about her, but he didn’t deserve the fate the Kims had in mind for him. He had saved her life twice. She hated owing anyone anything.

Besides. He had answers to questions she had never known she had.

To his credit, Chan Young had only called her crazy three times, and had begun to believe her after half an hour of arguing. With Chan Young, that was quite a record. He could be as stubborn as she was. 

Together she and her best friend had worked out the scheme— a disguise for Young Do, watchmen drugged by the bottle of soju left generously outside their door, and then the easy theft of keys from their belts.

After all, no one expected someone to rescue a wolf.

There was the thump outside the little guard room and she flew to the door, yanking it open.

Chan Young stood outside, his put-upon face in full evidence. Leaning heavily on him was the drained Young Do she remembered from her visit, arm slung around Chan Young’s shoulders for support, but his eyes intrigued.

“Was this your brilliant idea?” He queried as Chan Young hustled him inside.

Eun Sang nodded, already burrowing briskly through her bag. “Put this on.” She thrust the servant’s mock she’d sewn at him.

Young Do grabbed it, and despite the obvious pain he was in, began pulling it on. “Not that I’m complaining,” he said from the depths of the homespun, “but I’d like to know exactly what we’re doing.”

“Getting you out of here.” Eun Sang shoved the incriminating bottle into the depths of her bag and hooked the keys Chan Young handed her back on a belt.

“Is that all there is to it? Or did you have something more specific in mind?” He shook the sleeves out over his arms.

Chan Young smiled, and Eun Sang had to smile back. Her steady, earth-bound friend was getting into the spirit of the thing. “I’ve heard you like carrying baskets.”

Eun Sang held up her basket filled with sewing supplies and enjoyed the utter chagrin in Young Do’s eyes.

//

Once in her sewing room, Eun Sang deprived Young Do of the basket and nearly shoved him into the chair. “You look terrible.” She said, worriedly.

Chan Young flicked his eyes over him. “Do you eat…human food?” He asked cautiously.

Young Do gave him a withering look, and then glanced at Eun Sang. “Bright, this one.”

Eun Sang sighed and turned to Chan Young. “Ignore him. He’s always like this.”

Chan Young’s mouth just tilted slightly upward. “I’m going to find him something proper to eat. I’ll be back.” And vanished out the door.

Eun Sang put her hands on her hips and pursed her lips at her werewolf. “How you have enough energy to be this much of an ass, I don’t know.”

Young Do just tilted his head back wearily, closing his eyes. In the bright daylight coming through the window, he looked worse than she had remembered—skin pale, face haggard, eyes sunken.

“Young Do, are you going to be alright?”

He grinned, his eyes still closed. “Why? Are you worrying about me right now?”

“I’m not allowed to?”

One eye opened, lazy. “No, feel free. I’m just a strange subject for you to waste your worry on. A monster sent to kill you.” His voice was wry, mocking. Whether he was mocking himself or her, she couldn’t tell.

“But you didn’t. You saved my life.” And that was the crux of the matter she realized as she moved closer. Why? Why had he spared her? Why had he saved her again in the snow?

Both eyes opened now and regarded her. Impossibly deep. Impossibly guarded. “Don’t turn me into a hero, Cha Eun Sang.” He said softly. “You don’t know the rest of the story. You may regret it.”

“Will I?” Another step. She was close now, her knees brushing his through her skirt. Her eyes were steady on his. She had to know.

She didn’t know what it was she felt when she was with him – it ran the gamut of anger and gratitude, friendship and hatred. It was all words and riddles, hunger and peace. It was some strange brand of longing, an ache in her heart, a burn on her lips she couldn’t shed. It was a kiss in prison, and a book read to a sick girl.

She didn’t know what to call it.

She had to know if this was something utterly unique, incomparable, not experienced by anyone else. Or if it had a simple name.

Young Do stared up at her for a long moment.

And then his hands lashed out, too quickly for her to catch the motion, grabbing her wrists and holding them in a grip like iron. Imprisonment hadn’t completely depleted him of a physical strength she couldn’t compete with, and as she pulled back he held her still, his teeth slightly bared.

He pulled her close until they were face to face. He let his eyes slide down her face from her eyes, lingering at her mouth with a knowing smirk, and then stopping at her neck. His breath came hard, his face glazed with pain, but there was determination there too. She didn’t understand it – something was driving him, some hidden purpose she couldn’t see.

He leaned his lips into the skin of her throat, right where her pulse jumped, and scraped it gently with his teeth. She swallowed, hard. “You will.” He murmured against it. “Trust me, Eun Sang. You will.” He slid his mouth down her neck, his tongue savoring the flavor and texture of her skin. “I could eat you up in one bite. And don’t think I won’t.” He seemed to find what he was looking for at the place where her neck met her shoulder, pausing there, tasting. Her eyes nearly rolled back in her head.

And then he sank his teeth into it, deep.

She wrenched back, and he let her go, his hands falling limply against the armrests. His eyes were watchful, hooded, as she grasped her neck with her hand. Blazing with fury she slapped him, rocking his head back.

He rolled his neck, and then looked back at her. Smiling. “Don’t ever trust a wolf, Cha Eun Sang. And especially, don’t trust me.”


	20. Chapter 20

A stray stand of sun fell through the window, curling itself around Eun Sang’s body. The air was heavy with their breathing, the tenseness of disbelief. Even furious, she was beautiful, a goddess of blinding light. Young Do wanted to open his eyes all the way, just to soak in that light. He would never get enough of it.

But he kept them half-slitted, his face a mask of mockery.

In his head the hungry demand ran—Did you hear me? Don’t let me break you. You don’t know what I’ve done.

But how did you say that out loud?

He ran his tongue across his teeth, letting an added layer of menace filter over them. I’m a wolf. And I like the way you taste.

Which was also true, but difficult to say out loud.

Even as her face tightened further and her mouth opened for further recriminations, Chan Young entered the room, carefully balancing a tray of food and a jug of water.

Young Do’s nostrils instantly flared. The scent of food that wasn’t rotten was pure heaven.

Eun Sang looked as if she wanted to throw said food out in the hallway, but she just turned abruptly away, still seething. “I’m going out. I’ll be back when it’s time to escort him out.”

Chan Young, still absorbed in balancing the tricky bowl of porridge, nodded.

When the door slammed behind him he looked up, alerted, and then turned a measuring gaze on the wolf.

Young Do leaned his head back against the chair, letting his eyes slide closed one more time. “Don’t ask.” He said wearily.

//

Eun Sang leaned against the wall, breathing hard. The day wasn’t half over, and it had already sent her spinning. From the adrenaline involved in rescuing the wolf, to the sensation of his lips on her neck (who knew necks could feel like that?), to the shock of his sudden volte-face….it left her raging.

How dare he? How dare he? She curled her hand into a fist and banged it against the wall…again…again…harder, until she was choking, fighting back any idea of a tear, the skin of her fist torn. She wasn’t going to cry. She never cried. She wasn’t going to care. Rescuing him hadn’t been personal. She had wanted answers, that was all. He didn’t make her feel things she’d always thought herself too cynical to feel, make her dream dreams she’d thought had no room in her practical life. He didn’t have any power to hurt her. She made it her business in life to make sure few did.

“Careful.” A mild voice said. “You’ll hurt yourself.” A soft hand grabbed at her battered one, exploring the bruises she’d inflicted on herself.

Startled, Eun Sang wrenched it away. Beside her, so quiet she’d never heard him approach, was a young man.

“What?” He asked, flashing her a winning smile. “Did I scare you?”

“No.” She said back sharply, quickly.

He had gentle eyes and a self-amused expression that made her think he took nothing seriously. Or perhaps, that he took everything seriously. It was hard to tell. His smile widened. “You said that awfully fast.” He noted, and then leaned closer, eyes narrowing. “I think maybe you’re very frightened.”

“Of you?” Eun Sang scoffed before she could think better of it.

“Oh no. Of something much worse.”

“Like what?” In spite of herself, Eun Sang found herself leaning in, wanting to hear what this strange, soft-spoken boy had to say.

His face turned speculative. One finger came up to prod at her heartbeat. “Perhaps of this?”

//

Chan Young weighed the porridge, considering.

The wolf eyed kept his eyes closed.

Chan Young set it measuredly down. Just out of reach. He folded his arms in his best Eun Sang impression, and looked the narrow wolf up and down. “What, exactly,” he said, enunciating every word, “did you do to her?”

The wolf lifted his upper lip in a travesty of a smile, revealing pointed canines, his eyes still closed. “What do you think I’m capable of, like this? I think you overestimate me.”

Chan Young hooked a stool with his foot and pulled it close, then kicked it back and forth with his foot, unwilling to give up the height advantage he had. “I don’t know.” He admitted, surprising himself. Admitting ignorance, especially of what concerned his best friend, was not Chan Young’s strong suit. But even so, he found that he was continuing, eyes trained on Eun Sang’s mysterious savior turned saved. “But I know that she’s never looked like that before.”

The wolf’s eyes flickered open so quickly and then shut he’d nearly missed it. But it had definitely been there.

Aha.

“I didn’t do anything she couldn’t recover from.” The wolf amended.

Chan Young gave the stool a particularly vicious kick. “You seem to think you know her.”

“I do. Better than you.” This was accompanied by such an aggravating curl of the wolf’s lips, Chan Young nearly upended the stool. Instead he seated himself, crossing one leg over the other.

“You really think so?” He said coolly.

The wolf turned his head against the head rest, laughing silently, eyes open now, mocking. But there were shadows in the angles of his faces. “Believe it or not, I only want what’s best for her.“

Chan Young could feel his jaw set. Things had begun to change over the past weeks in a way that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. But the change was immutable. And this wolf had something to do with it. This had to be dealt with.

“And you think you know what that would be?”

“I know what she can handle.”

Chan Young had to scoff. “The ability to be hit again and again, and then to grit your teeth and stand upright, brush yourself off, and continue as if nothing happened. Maybe you and she have that in common. But do you know? Behind her wall, she’s only human, Choi Young Do. She can be broken, if you can reach her. And I think you may have reached her. I don’t like it. But I think it’s a fact. Be aware of it.”

The wolf’s face had set, indecipherable and rock-like. “Is this a warning or a threat, puppy?”

Chan Young stood, and picking up the porridge, handed it to the wolf roughly. “Both.” Turning away, he propped himself against the window, watching for any signs of alarm. The guards would wake up soon and realize their drinks had been drugged.

There was silence for a moment.

And then a low, “All I want is to leave her the way I found her. Whole.”

Chan Young snorted. “You don’t get to give back the pieces of people you take. Life doesn’t work that way.”

Another silence.


	21. Chapter 21

Park Hee Nam took in the bedraggled group standing outside her door with arched eyebrows and pursed lips. Chan Young held up one side of Young Do, while Eun Sang held up the other. The man looked like a nightmare come alive, and his attempt at a smile only made it worse. Making him look as if he’d just been beaten by peasants for stealing their daughters.

Which was, come to think of it, close to the truth.

“Mother.” Eun Sang smiled weakly. “I…uh…”

Hee Nam held up a hand, gave a sigh, and stood aside.

“Your mother is my favorite person in the world.” Chan Young whispered fervently to his comrade in mischief as they dragged their dilapidated wolf into the warm interior.

Eun Sang flopped him onto the settee, and nibbled at a fingernail, contemplating him. Young Do opened one eye, then closed it promptly as Hee Nam appeared at her elbow with tray of hot drinks. Somehow, in the all-seeing way only mothers managed, there were three cups prepared.

Chan Young and Eun Sang took theirs gratefully. The hot liquid, strangely sweet and peppery at once, burned down the back of the throat, flooding warmth to the tips of benumbed fingers and toes.

Young Do made the whimpering noise of a puppy who hasn’t been petted in five minutes.

Eun Sang rolled her eyes and took the third mug. “Thank you, mother.” She said as Hee Nam placed the tray down on the hearth and pulled stools from the wall for herself and Chan Young.

Eun Sang knelt down by Young Do, swishing the liquid thoughtfully. If she just mis-timed the turn of the cup…his eyes opened, with a cynical, fully aware amusement that made her blush. Hastily she rested the edge of the cup against his lips, tipping it.

His eyes remained open, fastened lazily on her as the muscles of his throat worked. It was oddly intimate and it infuriated her. How dare he look at her like that, after the things he had done?

“I think you owe me something that tastes much worse.” He teased.

She wrenched the cup away with the half the drink still in it and thumped it on the floor. “And now,” she said, turning away, “we must have a council of war.”

Hee Nam’s eyebrows soared and Chan Young gave a defeated sigh. “I was afraid you would say something like this.”

Young Do coughed mildly. Eun Sang ignored him with resolution. “Mother, this is Young Do and he is…a…”

“Friend?” Chan Young tried the word experimentally.

“Responsibility.” Eun Sang instead, eyeing her wayward friend firmly. “He’s the man who saved my life in the woods.”

Hee Nam twirled a finger in question.

“I…um…I left that part out.”

Her mother’s face turned disapproving. Eun Sang’s became guilt-ridden. Chan Young looked everywhere but at another face. Young Do chuckled.

Eun Sang directed a furious glare at him. “Mother, I’m sorry, this is very complicated. Young Do just needs time to recuperate before he can leave.” Recuperate enough to answer my questions. “Then I promise to explain everything.”

Young Do blinked innocently back at her.

Hee Nam twitched an eyebrow in interrogation.

“He was hurt in an…accident?” It came out more of a question than she intended, but it was a start.

Hee Nam’s expression was politely skeptical, but she asked no more questions. She raised a hand in half-blessing, half-welcome, and stood, sweeping emptied cups away in one efficient wind and disappearing into the kitchen with them.

Young Do gave a low whistle after a moment. “So that’s your mother? You resemble her.”

Eun Sang whirled on him and hissed, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He held up a conciliating hand. “It was a compliment.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “You can keep your compliments.”

Chan Young gave an awkward cough. “Um…I hate to interrupt this enlivening discourse, but I would like to pose the question as to what exactly we need a war council about?”

Eun switched her stare to him. “What do you mean?”

He ticked things off his fingers. “Young Do gets better, Young Do goes back where he came from. Where’s the problem?”

“Simple.” Young Do raised himself onto one elbow. “Young Do can’t go back where he came from without the pendant he was sent to this world to find.”

Chan Young’s forehead furrowed as he sensed a trap. “This is not going to be easy, is it?” He said with resignation.

“Depends on how you define easy.” Young Do waved an airy hand. “On the positive side, it’s quite close. On the negative side, we have to engage in a beautiful piece of larceny to obtain it. Of course, I’ve already done the hard part—planning it.”

Eun Sang closed her eyes and rubbed her lids with her fingers. “The pendant?”

“The pendant.” He confirmed.

Chan Young held up a puzzled hand. “I take it this no ordinary pendant.”

“It’s a piece of jewelry from my world that was stolen a long time ago. Through a puzzling series of unlikely events, it has wound up in the Kim vault.”

Eun Sang and Chan Young both regarded him with horror. “You never mentioned that.” Eun Sang protested.

“I was bleeding on the icy floor of a dungeon. You’re lucky I was coherent. Especially after…”

The memory of that bloody kiss came back with the force of an icy wind, and Eun Sang buried her fingers in her skirt. “Anyway.”

Chan Young was staring at her in unadulterated horror. She made a face at him. “Let’s focus. If we can get the pendant, you’ll go.”

“With pleasure, princess.” Even reclining on a couch and bleeding politely on a cushion he managed to convey the impression of having given an ironic bow. “But—“

“No buts. You’ll go. That’s all we need. So what’s this plan of yours?”

“You mentioned being invited to the masquerade at the Tan mansion?”

“Yes, but we only accepted that to have an excuse to rescue you—“

“Think again, puppy. Polish that smile of yours. You’re going to need to make Miss Bo Na very infatuated indeed….”


	22. Chapter 22

The fire crackled–a soft, slow, hypnotic sound.

Young Do watched it flicker and die from his vantage point on the settee. The little house hadn’t changed that much since his theft. A little larger perhaps, but still chilly, still poor.

He wondered how humans survived this. He wondered how Eun Sang had survived it. Or rather, he didn’t. He knew now how much it would take to break her.

He could break her. What had the puppy said? You didn’t get to give back the pieces you had taken.

He sighed, and put that thought neatly away in the furthest corner of his mind, where it belonged. Shifting uneasily on the thin cushions, he rolled over and froze.

Standing in the doorway to the kitchen was Eun Sang, pale and cold against the dark frame.

He wondered what it meant that she always came to him in the darkness and emptiness. Slowly he managed to push himself to a sitting position. “Have you come to bathe the brow of the poor sufferer?”

She held up a bowl of something. “I recall someone saying I could make him drink something awful when he was ill.”

Young Do grimaced. “So this is my punishment?”

She shrugged, and he swallowed, looking away. “I prefer the idea of evening the score.”

He had to crack a smile at that. “I’m surprised you’re still talking to me.”

“What? After earlier?” She stepped into the room, before the fire so that the light illumined her silhouette. She was preternaturally calm, controlled. He watched her, being so still, her gaze fixed on the bowl.

At last, she knelt so that their faces were even and presented the mixture to him, eyes finally meeting his. They were unreadable. “You still owe me a part of a story. Your story.”

He grimaced. He’d been afraid of that. He took the bowl, swishing it. It was an ugly green color, and he had the suspicion that it was actually completely unnecessary. He took a sniff, which only confirmed his suspicion. Nothing remotely healthy smelled like this.

“Where did I leave off?”

//

“Ah, that’s right. We’d left our foolhardy prince having found the pendant, after a long search, in a very surprising place. In the home of a humble farmer, out in the middle of nowhere. A man with a wife and two daughters. A man with a very strange collection of fay objects. But the prince didn’t think too much about it, took the pendant and prepared to return to his home, forgoing vengeance, whatever the consequences.

“Now, you must understand, our prince wasn’t terribly bright. He didn’t realize that his father had taken his son’s dislike of their new station as a threat. So when the king told the prince to go into the mortal world and track down that long-lost family heirloom—the prince went off, blissfully unaware that he had a pack of fay assassins hot in his heels, waiting for the perfect opportunity.

“But what do you think happened?”

And here he paused, clearly expecting some sort of answer.

Cha Eun Sang looked up, her mouth dry. “I don’t know.”

“Not even a little?” Young Do tilted his head. “I’m disappointed in you. I expected a flash of memory, at least.

“Well, what can you do? If you don’t remember, you don’t remember. But it makes my story less exciting. The assassins came out of hiding, as soon as the prince made to return home, just as they were ordered.

“But the prince was a good fighter, and a good magician. He managed to escape them and run, at least for a little while. But he in the end was cornered. And at a most inconvenient place at that. Near a river gorge—just down the way, by the way, you probably know it well—during the day, where a noblewoman was playing with her little son and a farmer’s daughter.”

Eun Sang felt suddenly dizzy. Flashes of bright light flickered across her memory, like summer sunshine filtering through leaves and dancing across water and grass.

“Oh yes.” His voice was lower, gravelly. “You do remember. The prince cornered, desperate, ten assassins closing in, poisoned arrows nocked. The noblewoman screaming, the children crying. The way the prince evaded an arrow, which lodged in the noblewoman instead. How she collapsed, bleeding out into the sunshine. The way all of them would have died that day, if the prince hadn’t done something drastic, and irredeemably stupid.” And as he said it, steady flashes jumped through her mind—a snarl, a scream, a splash of blood so bright it hurt her eyes. She winced. The pause dragged out, rough as pain.

“What,” Eun Sang had to stop and clear her throat. “What did you do?”

He changed tactics, so suddenly it left her spinning. “I could explain the whole long theory of magic to you, but, gods, it would take forever. We don’t have that kind of time. So I will try and simplify it. Look at me, little Cha Eun Sang.”

Against her will, she did. His face was thoughtful, like that of a teacher outlining a particularly difficult lesson. “Each person has two halves to their soul. Light and dark, night and day, earth and air. Sun and moon.

“The soul is the source of all magic. Werewolves—my kind—our magic is derived from the dark part of the soul, from the moon. It’s why our magic is best done at night, because the very world we walk in helps us then.

“To do magic, especially complicated magic, in broad daylight is a difficult thing for us. Impossible.

“The prince was trapped, but he had two tricks—one that he was in fact a very good magician indeed, and the other…the other that he had the pendant.”

Young Do moved his hand and Eun Sang flinched away as a bright light pierced the darkness. With a flourish he presented his palm upwards. Above his hand floated the source of the brightness—a shape like a coin, although somewhat larger. As it revolved, she could see that one side was carved the likeness of a golden sun, on the other an ivory image of the moon. She reached out a hesitant hand to touch it, but her fingers went through it.

With a sudden motion Young Do folded his fingers inward, and the image disappeared. “A long-lost family heirloom, designed to allow werewolves to share the magic of daywalkers, and vice versa. That was all he knew of it, and in desperation he linked himself with the little girl. She overflowed with energy and brightness, and he thought that by accessing the sun portion of her soul, he would have enough magic to fight back the assassins.

“Fortunately for him, and the children, this was true. He turned the assassins into shadows, locking them in the forest. Unfortunately for him, he did not realize that the pendant wasn’t merely a portal of access to the soul.

“It traded parts of the soul. The prince got enough day from the girl to save them, but in return she received part of his night. They were linked.

“The prince discovered this too late. When he tried to return home, he found that trying to leave caused him unbearable pain. It didn’t take him long to realize why, but by then his pendant had been lost, dropped in the fight, and taken away by the noblewomen’s retainers…worse, taken away the to the capital, where he couldn’t follow, bound too closely to the girl to go more than a handful of miles from her.

“He was trapped.”

\

Eun Sang rotated the bowl between her palms, slowly swishing the remaining dregs of the tea. “I was the little girl. Again.”

“Again. You have a most disturbing habit of turning up at the most pivotal moments of my life.’

“So…you have a piece of my soul?” The thought horrified her, but so much suddenly became clear. Young Do’s familiarity. The pull she’d felt towards him from the first.

God, that pull. It finally made sense.

Deflation followed oddly on the heels of the realization, cold as a splash of water to the face. The way he’d come close, only to push her away again. Because all along he’d known it had been the product of something unnatural, something that he wanted to end as soon as possible. And she, stupid mortal, had been trying to classify the feelings with a mortal vocabulary.

“And you have a piece of mine.” He said, gently. “It binds us. If anything happens to you, then…I would suffer.”

“And if something happened to you?”

“I don’t know.” He spread his hands. “You weren’t physically damaged when I was, so perhaps the fact that you are mortal nullifies some of the effects. I honestly can’t tell. This type of bond has not happened for perhaps a thousand years, if even then. I’ve never even heard of one being sustained this long. I don’t know…” He stopped.

“You don’t know if there are permanent consequences.” She finished hollowly.

“No.”

She exhaled. “My life was so very simple before you stole my basket.”

“No.” He shook his head. “It was complicated. You just didn’t know it.”

“And my father? Who…what was he?”

“Again, I don’t know Eun Sang. All I know are the legends that I followed here.”

“When I was in the forest, when you saved me, the man with the arrows…”

His flickered, pained. “One of my hunters. I couldn’t kill them outright, even with the power of your soul. They come out at night, still hunting me. It’s an old game by now, and I know how to avoid them. They ignore mortals, usually, but when you walked through, carrying the taint of me on you…”

She had a thousand things to say, a thousand questions, now that she had him here at her mercy, but the thing that came out was “You must resent me. So much.”

There was a sharp intake of breath, and a sudden movement. He was sitting upright, and he had taken her hands in his, putting the bowl softly on the ground. “No. Whatever else, that you need to believe. It was my fault that I was trapped here, never yours. I know that now.”

Her eyes sought his in the firelight. She wanted to believe that her wayward wolf didn’t hate her in some corner of his heart. “Now?”

He was silent, his thumb moving distractingly over her skin. It paused over the torn skin where she’d hurt herself earlier, and then continued “I…let myself become bitter. For a while…I resented you, yes. But I have since learned that…well. You saved me, Eun Sang. I owe you.” He stumbled haltingly over it, and then smiled. It was such a bright smile, Eun Sang wondered if it held a little bit of the sun from her soul.

Then he let go of her hands. “We should sleep. We have work to do tomorrow.”

The masquerade. She grimaced. “The Kim residence is going to be a madhouse after your escape.”

“Oh good.” He leaned back, drowsy confidence in his voice. “I do like to be noticed.”


End file.
